Thank you to the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School for inviting me to speak tomorrow, February 10, from 12:10-1:00pm EST. The topic is "The U.S.-China Crisis: Can Law Help?" More information on the event can be found here. If you are a member of the Yale community, you can register here. If not, you can access the Zoom meeting with this link: https://yale.zoom.us/j/93711920730?pwd=Szk0cDJSY3BYMVZXMjdtV2tacUZlUT09
Removal of local Chinese assistants from American news bureaus: what does it mean for China?
By Jerome A. Cohen
It is not clear to me how broad the swath is here. What about the Chinese assistants to non-American journalists still working for American newspapers in Beijing? What about the situation in Shanghai? To what extent is there still American reporting based in other places in Mainland China such as Guangdong Province and Tianjin?
As Jane Perlez has noted, this latest measure heavily strikes at the ability of foreign journalists to learn about Chinese developments. It hinders them from gathering news and views that are often favorable to China and the Chinese Government as well as unfavorable, and it denies those Chinese contacted by foreign media of an opportunity to make their lives and opinions known abroad.
There is another cost to the PRC in imposing this sanction. Service Bureau personnel may be reporting to the Party everything they observe while assisting the foreigners. Their absence not only reduces what foreigners can accomplish but also reduces what the Party can learn about the activities of those foreign journalists remaining in China. Non-American journalists who are fluent in Chinese and working for American papers will undoubtedly have to work harder if they too are denied Chinese assistants but they may also be a bit freer in their efforts. When I operated a foreign law office in Beijing many years ago, our Service Bureau assistant was always annoyed by having to spend every Saturday afternoon reporting to the Party on our activities of each week!
"The Real Sick Man of Asia" conundrum
By Jerome A. Cohen
The February 3 Wall Street Journal opinion piece entitled “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia” and the PRC’s consequent ouster of three WSJ China correspondents, calling the Journal “racist” have surely stimulated one of the more interesting debates encountered lately by those concerned with China. The topic is full of issues and ironies. Did the WSJ op-ed headline editor go too far in invoking an imperialist phrase from the distant past and giving it a catchy new meaning in the contemporary setting? Might the impact have been reduced had the title been recast as a question? Might the title have been less subject to attack if the underlying essay had discussed the coronavirus crisis now emanating from China rather than the fragility of the nation’s economy? How great would be the outcry over the perceived offense if the PRC had not chosen to mobilize its media at home and abroad to focus on this question rather than the immediately preceding United States government action requiring PRC reporters to register as foreign government functionaries or the rising criticisms of PRC handling of the virus crisis or the world’s growing worries over PRC political, economic and military influences? Is the PRC’s angry reaction an effort to divert national and international attention away from such substantive problems? To what extent was the PRC waiting to pounce on the WSJ, as well as other American media, for previous prohibited exposures of the financial dealings of the families of PRC leaders? How can the PRC and its supporters credibly invoke “racism” as the underlying motive for the offending headline? Can the WSJ’s support for the people of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet against PRC oppression be said to reflect “racism”? Are the heinous PRC efforts to “transform” many millions of Xinjiang Muslims “racist”? Are Han Chinese a “race”? Are they as “racist” as white Americans? Would it have been unwise self-censorship for the WSJ to refrain from a clever headline out of deference to a PRC that is increasingly seeking to repress freedoms of expression in other countries? Such questions deserve further discussion.
Alibaba, Joseph Tsai and the Future of South China Morning Post: Will the New Management Make Things Better or Worse?
by Jerome Cohen
In response to various queries about the background of Alibaba’s Joseph Tsai, I have a few tidbits of possible interest. Joe is a very able, dynamic lawyer turned businessman. I have only met him a few times very superficially when he was a young lawyer fresh out of Yale Law and working for a major American international law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell. His father, Paul, was my contemporary at Yale Law and a friend who returned to Taiwan from New Haven to work in government and then practice law with the family law firm in Taipei, the well-known firm of Tsar&Tsai founded by Paul’s father after he moved to Taiwan from Shanghai following Chiang Kaishek’s defeat on the mainland. Joe’s grandparents gave a dinner for me and my wife Joan during our first visit to Taipei in 1961. Although they had never yet visited the U.S. at that time, they spoke excellent English, probably as a result of missionary schooling in Shanghai before “Liberation”, and were charming people. Paul, Joe’s father, was always rather impatient with my interest in studying the PRC’s legal system and urged me to focus on Taiwan instead, something that I only began to do in the late ‘70s. My ties to Paul withered after I became active in supporting normalization of relations with Beijing. Joe obviously had a different attitude from his father’s, turning to business involving the Mainland not long after Deng’s Southern Tour in early ’92, and made Hong Kong his base. He also acquired Canadian nationality.
Joe apparently will take major responsibility for running the SCMP, at least initially. What he will do with it is unclear. A few sentences in his recent extensive public statements are worrisome, of course, to those who fear that he may make the SCMP merely a more influential version of the China Daily. For years even before Alibaba’s purchase, the SCMP’s reporting has been under ever greater Beijing influence. Some reporting, however, has continued to be quite feisty. The editorials have also often been punchy, and, until recently at least, the regular op ed writers have seemed diverse and quite free to express their opinions. For the past seven plus years, I have been writing controversial op eds for SCMP once or twice a month on an ad hoc basis and have never met any attempt to censor my views or deflect me from my choice of a sensitive subject.
Will the new management make things better or worse? Some current staff members who have been unhappy with their editors’ efforts to go easy on the PRC may finally give up the ghost and leave, as many predecessors have. Since the current news editors have already been leaning towards Beijing, the new owner need not replace them and can comfortably pledge not to interfere with editorial policy, at least as far as reporting goes. But reporters who have sought to resist editorial restrictions may now find less support than ever for their cause, and some are surely discouraged.
Yet Joe Tsai may surprise people. Although inexperienced in the news game, he might seize what is plainly an historic opportunity to create a world-class enterprise that will earn the praise of even liberal critics of the media and become prestigious enough to resist most pressures from the PRC. He surely has the ability to do this. One question concerns the future influence of Shanghai-based financier Eric X. Li, reported by David Barboza of the NY Times to have played an influential role in the acquisition. Li has been a strong and articulate supporter of PRC policies in the media and in political circles.
Having just seen two excellent films this week about the struggles of American media – “Spotlight” and “Truth”, I wonder whether there will someday be a comparable movie about the SCMP and Alibaba!