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Waiting for the Rise of the Media to Change ‘the West is Strong, I am Weak’
By Xiao Shu  (笑蜀)
http://chinaelections.org/NewsInfo.asp?NewsID=130121
Originally Published in the Southern Weekly (南方周末)
Translated By Anton Lee Wishik II

As China rises, it is increasingly unsatisfied with rising merely in the economic sphere. Because of its thirst for international respect, China is paying more and more attention to international public opinion.  However, while inspecting the work of the People’s Daily, President Hu Jintao referred to one reality that cannot be avoided: “Currently, with the worldwide increase in the frequency of all kinds of ideological and cultural exchange, mixture, and conflict, the pattern of ‘the West is strong, I am weak’ in international public opinion has not fundamentally changed.”  This undoubtedly seriously restricts the projection of the nation’s soft power.   Changing this pattern of public opinion by allowing our media to follow in the entire nation’s coordinated rise, from our point of view, is an extremely urgent task.

Opening is the Only Way Out

Referring not to the distant past but just to the recent earthquake and ensuing rescue effort, the idea that ‘the West is strong, I am weak’ was actually not at all present.  In fact, just the opposite was true as ‘I’ became the main character.  The main reason for this lay in a heartening change in the Chinese government’s news management system; in brief, the system was more open.  This not only represented an opening to the external world, but more importantly represented an unprecedented opening of the internal system.  Exactly because of this internal opening, the domestic media was able to put their own skills to the fullest use and take their reporting to a new level.  Thus, the domestic media become the authoritative news source that the international media had to consult and cite as they reported on the Wenchuan earthquake.  China’s voice was finally leading the chorus, and this led to objectivity in international public opinion and fair reporting and commentary regarding China’s rescue effort.  People all over the world were convinced and made aware of the fact that saving lives dominated everything and that everything was done with the purpose of making way for the rescue effort.  Thus, a brand new national image of China as connected with all of modern civilization was established.

The domestic media’s explosion of power not only won professional respect and glory for the media itself, but in the end, it also won respect and glory for the entire nation.

From this ironclad fact, it is not difficult to comprehend the subtle relationship between the media and the nation’s soft power.  The media is not only for projecting the nation’s soft power, as it goes without saying that the strength of the media is just one part of soft power; it also goes without saying that the strength or weakness of the media is an important indicator for measuring the strength or weakness of a nation’s soft power.  Whether the news management system opens up internally and whether making a great, strong media is promoted as a national strategy, not only relate to the fate of the media, but relate especially closely to the fate of the nation.

It is true that in the domestic media there is no lack of naïve elements.  However, no matter what naivety there may be, the domestic media’s outstanding performance in reporting the Wenchuan earthquake has satisfactorily proven that its strength is deserving of our trust and dependence.  This is true from both a professional viewpoint and the viewpoint of a loyal nation and its people.  It’s the same as how people cannot refer to China’s former poverty and then talk nonsense about the Chinese people’s inability to create wealth. As soon as opportunities present themselves, Chinese people will quickly create economic miracles.   And as soon as the news management system is opened for the first time, and as soon as there is a wide-open area for maximizing skills, the domestic media itself will have no difficulty in quickly rising internationally and creating new Chinese miracles.

Powerful nations must have a developed media.  Only upon possessing a developed media will we be able to take the initiative in setting agendas. Only upon possessing a developed media will we be able to use the voice of the people to persuade the world and use culture to persuade the world.  A developed media is a nation’s greatest business card and the degree to which it develops, in reality, reflects the state of a nation’s freedom and prosperity.  If a nation wants to be truly powerful, it should cherish its media as it would cherish its own eyes, and it should, to the greatest extent possible, create conditions to facilitate the rise of the media.

Developing a high-level of professionalization and having a highly credible and competitive media are significant topics related to the rise of China, and deservedly so.  International public opinion is a special type of competitive arena with many voices, many levels of news, and many worthy exchanges, mixtures, and conflicts.  In order to enter this special competitive arena, the most important thing to rely on is the media’s own skill.  First, the level of professionalization and credibility must be increased in the domestic media.  Only then can it hold its ground among this competition.  International public opinion is also a uniquely structured market with all kinds of media competing fiercely, doing all they can to fight for the worldwide audience.  Only by bravely throwing oneself in to it can the market be won, and from this victory comes growth and expansion.

To summarize, the successful experience of news management during the earthquake rescue effort was firstly opening and especially internal opening.  If Hu Jintao’s requests regarding institutional form and long term persistence are upheld, the Chinese media can not only do things according to news dissemination laws and increase the level of transparency in news, but even more importantly, it can do things according to the laws of the market and fully compete in news and concept markets.  Like a great eagle flying across the sky, like a fierce tiger striking in the wilderness, only by developing a media like this will it be truly powerful and able to truly represent our country’s strength, and thus, fundamentally reverse the traditional pattern of ‘the West is strong, I am weak.’

Notes on this translation:

1.    For Chinese writers, it is quite common to use first person pronouns to refer to China.  It’s a decidedly different from common practices in Western countries.  Rarely will you hear an American refer to the US as ‘my country.’  In English, it adds a tone of possessiveness and separation, but in Chinese it is completely acceptable.  Thus, my repeated translation of ‘西强我弱’ as ‘the West is strong, I am weak’ could also be translated as ‘the West is strong, China is weak.’  I chose the more literal translation, but it’s an important issue to be aware of.

2.    Wenchuan refers to a city in Sichuan province near the epicenter of this past May’s earthquake

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