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An Exploration of the Origins of Der Spiegel’s Distorted Reports on China
《明镜》周刊歪曲中国报道探源

By Dong Xiaobin (董晓宾)

Original Publication:

The International Herald Leader
国际先驱导报
Link to Article in Chinese

Translated by Anton Lee Wishik II for Mei-Zhong Guanxi

From ‘Textbook News’ to ‘Anti-China Henchman’

It is necessary for the Merkel administration to go through the media to create a change in public opinion on China policy.  Reporters are at the front ‘charging enemy lines.’

From telling lies about China pillaging Germany’s riches, to labeling all Chinese in Germany as spies, and then to slandering the Chinese government as having betrayed the spirit of the Olympics, and even to the point of raising the flag of Tibetan independence…

Why has Der Spiegel, a magazine which enjoys a great reputation in Germany and even the world, ignored the idea of balanced and accurate news and continuously released reports on China which distort the facts, thus becoming the ‘anti-China henchman’?

A Very Famous Magazine in Germany

If you want to understand how large an influence a magazine has on the society it exists in, there is perhaps no better example than Germany’s Der Spiegel.

It can be said that in Germany, when there is controversy, people say, ‘this is Der Spiegel’s issue’; when there is a menace, people say, ‘I will tell Der Spiegel about this’; when there is pity, people say, ‘if Der Spiegel reports on this, it will be ok’; when looking for justification, people say, ‘Der Spiegel didn’t pay attention to this at all.’

It can also be said that Germans who love reading and reports have renamed Monday, the day on which Der Spiegel is regularly published, as ‘Der Spiegel Day.’  Reportedly, when this day arrives each week, German reporters don’t go out for interviews, and everyone carries a copy in their hands as they study it furiously in order to find the topics chosen for this week’s reports.  Even if this is only a joke, it still reflects a phenomenon in which some topics of discussion in German society are set by this magazine.

In 1947, Rudolf Augstein, who was only 23 at the time, took a publication called This Week’s News and changed it into Der Spiegel.  From there, he unveiled the first pages of this weekly magazine that has followed Germany’s modern history for more than half a century.  Nowadays, Mr. Augstein is no longer around.  However, under his management, Der Spiegel has become one of the most famous news magazines in Germany, and even the world, with a weekly circulation in the millions.

Having stretched across more than half a century of trials and hardships, Der Spiegel has shown its ability all along.  The tip of its spear has always been directed at hierarchies of power and any instances of corruption.  This had led to it receiving great praise from the public.  One assessment said, “Der Spiegel stirs up trouble, never takes into account the feelings of others, and takes things that originally should have been concealed and announces them publicly to the masses.  Therefore, give the oversight of power to Der Spiegel as it is in exact accordance with the masses’ expectations.”

Once Held Up as ‘Textbook News’

After reform and opening, as the Western media gradually entered the Chinese people’s field of vision, Der Spiegel became known by both the intellectual class and university students.  In 2004, Feng Jing (冯静), who was still a graduate student at the People’s University at the time, became one of the numerous news majors who studied news reporting from this magazine.

“The reason the Der Spiegel weekly won such immense fame is the investigative reporting that has pervaded this publication over the decades.”  This was written in the famous essay titled ‘Der Spiegel and Investigative Reporting’ that Feng Jing published with her professor.

Being eager to learn, members of the Chinese media developed a strong interest in the organization of Der Spiegel’s reports, the editing process, and even the cover design.

One member of the domestic media published an article in 1996 titled ‘How Der Spiegel is Putting an End to Mistakes.’  In it, the author didn’t try in the least to conceal his own ‘wondrous’ feeling upon visiting Der Spiegel’s company headquarters in Hamburg.  “As a news publication with its corresponding influence in Germany and even Europe and the world, what amazed us was its correspondingly low ‘error rate.’  In an interview, a description by one of the people in charge of the politics section surprised us.  They said, ‘Under normal circumstances, our publication only messes up a few characters each week.’”

Reportedly, one important reason they were able to reduce mistakes to a very low level is because Der Spiegel possesses what could be called the most complete collection of data in all of Germany and Europe.  In addition, they also have special data collection experts.  Feng Jing remembers that “In addition to providing full and accurate background data for reports, every manuscript that will be published goes through a detailed inspection by a data collection expert to ensure that the report is as accurate as possible.”

Even Der Spiegel’s cover design has undergone specialized studies by Chinese media experts.  They felt that “the coloring is bold and vigorous, hard for readers to forget, the images have a definite form, full of connotation, the use of simplicity and complexity, the cover design has a feeling of rhythm, the closely followed issues and viewpoints could arouse the insensible.”

In addition, domestic articles introducing this magazine’s legendary experience are too numerous to mention.

Distorting Reports Invites Humiliation

However, circumstances change with the passage of time, and in our citizens’ view, this magazine’s ‘textbook worth’ has already been greatly discounted, even to the point of becoming ‘textbook anti-China reporting.’

One net user who signed their name as ‘Small Approach, Large Dream’ wrote, “When I was young I thought Der Spiegel was something good…But now I know…It’s just prejudiced, anti-China garbage.”

Another user named ‘sisi’ stated, “I never knew of Der Spiegel, but now it often shows up before my eyes…I can only say, you are well-known…but only because you are notorious.”

Many other comments also expressed dissatisfaction, with one domestic commentary even including the topic ‘Der Spiegel Spurned by Net Users.’  It stated that “encountering this kind of misfortune,” it seems as if this magazine cannot blame anyone but itself.

On May 14th, Der Spiegel published an online commentary titled ‘Turning a Natural Disaster into a Public Relations Operation’ that needlessly criticized the Chinese government.  The article went so far as to state that “The Communist Party wants to use the handling of the crisis caused by this natural disaster to end the international isolation that followed the ‘3-14’ Tibet incident.  Never shooting at random, the official Chinese media allowed the use of this earthquake and the accustomed use of political slogans to unite the people around the party.”

Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Paper criticized this as a report “lacking personal integrity.”  In fact, Der Spiegel has ‘lacked personal integrity’ far more than once recently.

Reportedly, in the ‘three great rules of writing’ that Der Spiegel formulated when it first began publishing, one important rule is “providing irrefutably true news.”  As a stipulation, “when creditability cannot be ascertained, we would rather abandon a piece of news than risk the danger of publishing false news.”

However, for one Chinese in Germany, Zhou Jian (周坚), these regulations were ruined as early as August 2007, with the publication of Der Spiegel’s ‘Yellow Spies’ cover story.

The story stated, “Curious and diligent with wide interests – These are the characteristics of the thousands of Chinese in German universities and research institutions.  Maybe they are perfect researchers or maybe they are perfect spies – or maybe they are both.”  The comments related to these ‘equivocations’ by Germany’s Der Spiegel thoroughly infuriated the Chinese scholars and students in Germany who had been portrayed as ‘yellow spies.’

It went so far that the ‘cover effect’ that the Chinese media had formerly been so delighted by now became a special tool as the magazine did its utmost to smear China’s image.

On the cover of the April 7th, 2008 issue of Der Spiegel, was an image combining wire netting weaved into the five Olympic rings together with the Chinese Party Congress.  The cover stated in inflamed language, “Look at How the Chinese Government Suppresses People and Betrays the Olympics.”

Domestic movie critic Si Ma Ping Bang (司马平邦) said, “Upon seeing this issue of Der Spiegel, I suddenly thought back to something written for a blog in 2003 that severely attacked America’s Time Magazine.  That time, Time had combined images of the Chinese flag and a SARS patient’s lung.  It was unbearably disgusting.”

Reporters’ Bias Influences Objectivity of Reports

In early 2008, by coincidence, Zhou Jian, a Chinese in Germany and the Rights Protection Committee spokesperson, ran into two Der Spiegel reporters who had been stationed in China.  At the time, these two reporters were conducting a reading of their new book ‘The Other China.’  Zhou Jian bought a copy and reported that “It was a very negative commentary on China.”

In the book, it was written that a Chinese worker earns a very low hourly wage and salaries are very low.  During the reading, a German reader raised doubts about this:  “I have been to China and prices are relatively cheap.  If you take this into account, are the workers’ salaries still low?  Don’t you think these reports are misleading?”

Facing these doubts, the Der Spiegel reporters had no choice but to admit that “You are right.”  Zhou Jian remembers that they still didn’t forget to defend themselves by going on to say, “However, the welfare of Chinese workers is clearly not as good as German workers.”

Zhou Jian says that “These reporters misled German readers in the most typical way.  They didn’t specifically explain certain relative elements, they used some simple figures in isolation, and they then turned them into absolutes.  For example, they criticized the government on human rights by giving the example that China’s annual number of executions is the most in the world.  However, they didn’t mention how many people are in China, the total population of China, the per capita rate, how many criminals America executes, or the American per capita rate.  The reporters didn’t mention this kind of content.”

It is obvious that with their own bias, these German reporters will create a great deal of bias in their readers as they introduce them to China.  In order to research Der Spiegel’s reporting on China, Feng Jian made a special effort to contact some of their reporters.  She realized that “When choosing sources, these reporters had an obvious attitude of mistrust towards official news.  However, when they weren’t able to find any conclusive evidence to overturn the Chinese government’s news, they introduced a large element of conjecture.”

In fact, Der Spiegel’s bitter sarcasm towards China is not something that has only occurred in the past couple years.  Feng Jing remembers that early in the administration of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, criticism of China’s human rights was becoming more vigorous and pressure was growing.  At the time, Der Spiegel’s reporting on China revolved around articles on human rights issues.  When Schroeder revised his China policy, Der Spiegel’s reports on human rights in China were clearly reduced.  At the same time, the amount of reports on China’s economy increased rapidly.

An Endorsement for Germany to Revise Its China Policy

Along with another change in Germany’s political situation, Der Spiegel once again changed the direction of its reporting on China.  A domestic editor who browses all the reports of the big players in the German media on a daily basis told this paper that his feeling is that in the past year or more, when compared with the rest of the German media, Der Spiegel’s attacks on China have been the most prominent.

After Angela Merkel came on the stage, she was tough on China as she pushed forward her value-system based diplomacy.  Along with this, Der Spiegel became the ‘anti-China henchman, and the two sides were not in fact unrelated.

For the recent round of Der Spiegel reports attacking China, the beginning can be traced back to the cover story on November 9th, 2006 titled ‘An Attack from the Far East – War for Wealth: The Global Grab for Power and Prosperity.’  This report’s author, head of Der Spiegel’s Berlin office, Gabor Steingart, is no simpleton.  During the 2005 German elections, he drew on his support within Der Spiegel in publishing several articles supporting Merkel.

In 2006, he published a book titled ‘War for Wealth: The Global Grab for Power and Prosperity’ which publicized the economic threat from China, India, and other developing countries.  It also proclaimed that all industrialized and developed nations faced the so-called plundering of prosperity by China, India, and other developing countries.  In his book, Steingart advocated the joint establishment of an ‘economic NATO’ by the industrialized and developed nations.  This would be done in order to handle the so-called economic threat arising from China.  Not long after this book came out, Steingart was received by Merkel, and the German media reported in lofty tones on the inquiry into a ‘new China policy’ which took place in the meeting in the Chancellor’s office.  Not long after this meeting, at the beginning of 2007, Merkel unveiled a policy involving the establishment of an ‘economic NATO’ involving ‘trans-Atlantic economic cooperation’ between the US and Europe.

Zhou Jian feels that “With the Merkel administration changing its policy towards a country as important as China, of course it would lead to a series of reactions.  Thus, it was necessary to use the media to change the circumstances of public opinion regarding the policy.”  He also feels that although one magazine cannot completely determine government policy, through public opinion it can influence and alter contrasts of strength among entire schools of political thought within a nation.  On a deep level, this is the reason why Der Spiegel wrote so many negative, inciting reports on China.

Under this backdrop, it is not difficult to understand Der Speigel becoming the ‘anti-China henchman.’  Zhou Jian says that “With Der Spiegel reporters having been stationed in China this long, in reality, they are very familiar with China’s situation.  If they wrote about China in a practical and realistic way, their reports would not be like this.  After meeting them, my feeling is that it is not ignorant people doing ignorant things, but is people who understand what is going on intentionally doing ignorant things in order to achieve their objectives.”

Note: This site has no relation to the author or original publication.  This translation was done for informational purposes only and not for commercial gain or to express any personal views.  To contact the author or original publication, please check the details listed above.

For past articles on media bias and China, please see:

The Discrediting of the New York Times in the Chinese Media

Was the New York Times a Bit CNN Today?

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