Thursday, March 29, 2001
PARIS -- The paradox of modern China begins with the fact that its leaders want it both ways: They are hungry for the benefits of joining the global economy. But they hope to avoid paying the price, which is maintaining an open society.
International newspapers and magazines that distribute in China have experienced that abstract dilemma in practical terms lately, as they have tried to cope with decisions by China's official censors.
The International Herald Tribune, of which I am executive editor, has seen its distribution limited in China recently, in part because we carried stories about the Falun Gong religious [group]. The Herald Tribune also gets banned occasionally in other countries for seemingly innocuous articles, such as in Saudi Arabia for the one we ran Dec. 11 with the headline "Saudi Elite Moves Cautiously to Bring Country Into Modern World."
What makes China's censorship surprising is that it coincides with Beijing's preparations to join the World Trade Organization and its bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games. This is a time, you would think, when the Chinese would want to show the world that they are embracing the 21st century, rather than trying to hold it at arm's length through censorship.
Chinese membership in the WTO would ratify the opening to the West begun more than 20 years ago by the late Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping. And hosting the Olympics would provide a showcase for this new China.
But do Beijing's leaders really imagine that the free market is divisible -- that you can buy and sell computers but not transmit ideas? Do they imagine that the world will come to an Olympics where visitors can't read the sports page of a global newspaper because that issue happens to carry an article about a dissident group?
The very notion of censorship seems at odds with the pervasive communications networks that are the backbone of today's global economy. Financial traders in Shanghai have the same need for reliable, instantaneous information as traders in New York, London and Frankfurt. There is no middle ground when it comes to the information economy -- you're either connected, or you aren't.
One Asian leader who tried for a generation to control the flow of information into his country, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, has concluded that such attempts to wall off society are self-defeating.
In a conversation in January, Lee said of the Internet's instant flow of information: "I don't think we can stop it now," adding, "I don't see any alternative. You either use the Internet or you are backward. You are dispensing with a very valuable and cheap tool. The Chinese government will find that out over time."
President Jiang Zemin of China has some of that same realism. He told interviewers from The Washington Post last Friday: "We are now in a new century. Even in the run-up to the new century, we have already seen that under economic globalization, under international markets, countries surely come into competition with each other."
Openness and competition are, indeed, the essential features of the global economy. Yet in the censor's office in Beijing, some people still imagine that restricting the flow of news is desirable -- or even possible. It isn't, and in the end it makes the people trying to maintain censorship look as out-of-date as the radio jammers of the Cold War.
For international publications, being banned occasionally is part of doing business -- it is regrettable, but it is a fact of life. And I wouldn't mention the news media's recent problems if there wasn't a risk that these incidents could be a prelude to a broader ban on Western publications. That would be bad for the news business, bad for our Chinese readers -- and, we journalists would humbly submit, bad for China itself.
So here is a simple test for the WTO and the International Olympic Committee as they weigh China's bid for recognition as a global economic power. The mark of a nation's maturity is when it stops trying to suppress the ideas contained in that ancient but obviously still potent form of communication, a newspaper.
Category: Falun Dafa in the Media
