“Harmony” Came Back Quickly After the Earthquake
On the website of the Government of Sichuan Province, where a ruthless great earthquake happened on May 12, there used to be a piece of news saying that a local government of Ngawa Prefecture (阿坝州, near the epicenter of this big quake) successfully tracked and stopped the rumor in Barkam County (马尔康县) that “There would be an earthquake in the coming days.”
After the earthquake, heated debate aroused around the early signs and predictions of the earthquake. And this news, was quietly removed from the government website.
I wrote a posting on my Chinese blog quoting the tracking of “rumors”, and was ordered to be deleted by the Web police.
There has been signs of “uncensored” reporting and more space of free speech right after the earthquake happened. And the modern communication technologies such as the Internet and text messages helped a lot in the enhancement of the space of free speech. And the government and government-backed “mouthpieces” were really swift in responding to the catastrophe.
And quickly, the Propaganda Section of “the” Party followed in to restrict the media the second day. A friend of mine works at a renowned newspaper in Southern China, and he said, he “saw the photocopy of the document ordering to stop independent reportage and to quote ‘the truth’.”
Now, on China’s TV, you can only see a lot of information. But the highlight is on high-officials like Wen speaking slowly on getting “complete success in the relief effort” (and Hu talks even slower than Mr. Wen, the Premier), despite the innumerable deaths lying quietly in the debris. Like the government media have done in every natural and man-made disaster, every effort and every success are interpreted as the result of sticking to the party-line.
