China at 60: Prequel to the waking giant

MANILA, Philippines - There’s a sense of expectancy in the nippy Beijing haze as China prepares to celebrate its 60th birthday and mark another chapter in the era of openness and reform.

The red-letter day is on Thursday, and since mid- September journalists have been flocking to the capital and other cities to meet with state and media officials to report on the countdown for the signal event.

Asia’s giant is no longer asleep, but state information officials stress that China is no threat to the rest of the world, particularly the west. Much has changed since the Cultural Revolution, and Mao Zedong must be grimacing in his preserved sleep with his dream of classless society virtually gone to naught and farmers can become billionaires.

“Many industries, especially down south are private enterprises, government has nothing to do with them,” said Jiang Weigiang, director general of the State Council Information Office through a translator, during a welcome dinner for journalists from the Philippines earlier this month at the Jiangsu Plaza in Beijing.

China is well aware that the west, particularly the US, is wary of its vast economy and military potential. “But what can we do, they are uncomfortable if we go invest in other countries, and also if we invite investors here,” said another official.

One example of sticky trade points with the US would be the tire tariff controversy, according to Wang Guoqing, vice minister of the State Council Information Office.

Old ghosts also haunt the People’s Republic, like censorship, but Wang was quick to point out that state-owned CCTV was allowed to air footage of the unrest in Urumqi, capital of the westernmost province of Xinjiang last July, in which more than a hundred were killed and hundreds of others injured in ethnic riots, as per wire reports.

Media regulators are there to block pornography and other decadent elements from the outside – though some billboard ads along the freeway border on the raunchy –also the same reason why there is hardly any libel in China.

In the 60-year history of the People’s Daily, which has a circulation of over a million, never has it faced a libel suit. Indeed Zhang Liang, director general of the paper’s international communication department, seemed unfamiliar with the term, or which may have been simply lost in translation.

Throughout the visit of the journalists the Chinese officials repeatedly emphasized that we were to report plainly on what we saw and heard, in the spirit of transparency, and if we spoke no evil it was not because our mouths were gagged.

A meeting at the foreign ministry later in the week with Ma Jisheng, deputy director general of the information department, highlighted the close ties between the Philippines and China.

Ma said the former first lady Imelda Marcos was very close to Mao, as well the late dictator himself who tried to adapt some of the chairman’s policies in the barangay level during the new society.

As for the thorny issue of the Spratlys and the South China Sea, Ma said that there is nothing that can’t be resolved with diplomacy and negotiations, “never the use of force.”

The foreign ministry official quoted Deng Hsiao Ping: “We are not intelligent enough. Let the next generation take care of it.”