At a function to promote the Xijiang province of China, Ambassador Zhang Yan was asked by a business journalist about a distorted map of India, showing parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh as being a part of China. By most news reports, the ambassador asked the reporter to “shut up” and then tried to make peace.
Below are the headlines from some newspapers:
The Times of India: “Distorted map puts China envoy in spot”
The paper’s “special correspondent” goes the extra mile to provide additional perspective to the incident:
“A scribe who had gained entry on the basis of his media credentials decided to take matters in his hand and clambered on the stage protesting the inclusion in the map of “parts of India” in China.
“As chaos reigned and the journalist, joined by another person, continued to give vent to his feelings from the state, Zhang told him to “shut up”. This further inflamed the scribe who was then pacified by Zhang and a senior foreign office official.…
“The hour-long disruption left many in the audience stunned and dissatisfied as this was the first time a business delegation led by its governor had come to India. China is investing heavily in the Xinjiang province and Pakistani businessmen, along with theri counterparts from bordering central Asian counrties, have already made inroads into the region.”
Indian publishers are relentlessly cutting expenditure. Meanwhile, The Economist “newspaper”—one of the few profitable publications even during the downturn—unveils its maiden television campaign in India.
The relationship between India and China has in recent months become, as the cliche goes, the cynosure of all eyes. Border roads and dams; military incursions; a row over the Dalai Lama; illegal Chinese workers on Indian soil, Google™ maps, all have become milestones in the steady escalation of tensions.
The media has been at the centre of the dispute, and there is a feeling that “sections of the Indian media” (in other words, “anti-China media”) have been inclined to ratchet up the volume, ostensibly at the nod of their American, capitalist masters.
But could the opposite also be equally true? That “sections of the Indian media” (in other words, “pro-China media”) have been inclined to play down the tensions, ostensibly at the nod of their Chinese, communist masters?
Some proof comes from the manner in which the Lowy Institute for International Policy‘s survey of Chinese attitudes about their country and its place in the world is being reported.
# Exhibit A, above, is from the December 2 edition of The Indian Express, New Delhi, whose Delhi-based correspondent avers that 40 per cent of Chinese think India is their country’s biggest threat “after the United States”.
# Exhibit B, below, is from the December 4 edition of The Hindu, Madras, whose Beijing correspondent reports that environmental issues are perceived to be the biggest challenges facing their country. “60 per cent of Chinese did not view India as a threat…, only 34% viewed India as a threat an the rest were non-committal.”
For the record, prime minister Manmohan Singh said during his recent State visit to the United States that he could not understand the reasons for China’s recent “assertiveness”.
Newspaper facsimiles: courtesy The Indian Express and The Hindu
The Great Wall between India and China is not made of bricks and mortar; it is made of freedom and liberty. Any debate, any discussion, anywhere, on the superpowers-to-be is sealed, signed and delivered by the roaring presence of those essential ingredients in plentiful on our soil, and the utter lack of it in our great neighbour.
China notoriously detests dissent—and democracy.
It bars foreign media from freely moving inside its boundaries; Tibet is off-limits to them as is Tiananmen Square. BBC was famously taken off Rupert Murdoch‘s Star Network at the behest of the comrades. Google and Yahoo effortlessly dance to the tunes of the Chinese dictators. Chinese citizens routinely can’t log into YouTube, Facebook and other media. And so on.
But has difference between “us” and “them” been erased by the Congress-led UPA government?
In barring foreign journalists from going to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh to report the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama‘s week-long visit to the northeastern State which China off and on claims as its own, has the Manmohan Singh government thumbed its nose at India’s great democratic traditions?
Has India missed a trick in showing its inviolable sovereignty before a global audience? In behaving much like China would, has the Congress-led regime obliterated the difference between democracy and dictatorship? Or was the government right given the war-mongering that has recently been on display?
No media debate on Asia is complete with0ut comparing India to China, or vice-versa. Even among middle-class media consumers, there is a barely disguised contempt for the slow pace of growth in democratic India, for all the “obstacles” in the path of progress and development, compared with the frenetic pace in The Middle Kingdom.
But is there a comparison to be made at all?
Is China really in India’s league, notwithstanding the growth rate, the forex reserves, etc? This is a CNN video of its Beijing correspondent attempting to go to Tiananmen Square on 4 June 2009, the 20th anniversary of the massacre, before being engulfed by umbrella-weilding “undercover” police.
As the legendary Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows, now based in Beijing, writes:
“This is the kind of thing that makes you hold your head and say: Rising major power in the world?”
And this, on top of a ban on Twitter and Facebook, and censorship of television stories which begin with “In China today…” or “Twenty years ago in Bei….”
It’s not just authoritarian governments that are preventing citizens and activists from accessing news and views that they would not like them to lay their eyes and ers on. Transnational corporations that supply the technology to make access possible in the first place are playing a hand, according to Al Jazeera‘s media show, The Listening Post.
Simon Ostrovsky reveals that giant companies like the San Francisco-based Cisco (“The Human Network”) which supply the hardware for internet networks often also supply the commercial software, and cooperate more closely with regimes than previously imagined. Cisco, of course, denies the charge.
The strange thing about the so-called Global Village is that it has turned us all provincial. We relate to, are interested in, connect with, and remember news events with an insularity that would befuddle Marshall McLuhan. And in the process, we forget that stuff happens outside of the bubble we inhabit.
The Listening Post, the world-class media show on Al Jazeera English hosted by Richard Gizbert, has compiled the stories and personalities that dominated the global media in 2008, in association with Influence Communications, the Canadian media analysts who look at more than a billion TV items from 160 countries.
And the winner? The US presidential election which occupied a grand total of 6.5 million minutes of airtime around the world. On election November 8, and the day after, an average of 21 television news items per second were aired worldwide. The full list is as under:
1) US presidential elections
2) War in Iraq
3) Global economic meltdown
4) The Beijing Olympics
5) War in Afghanistan
6) Oil prices and climate change
7)Nicholas Sarkozy and Carlo Bruni
8) Tibet during the Olympic torch relay
9) Conflict over South Ossetia betwen Russia and Georgia
10) Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf
The controversial media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, on India and China, in Esquire:
“Any company that is global cannot ignore China or India. They are just enormous, emerging great powers. I enjoy China. I have a lot of friends there. But all we have there are the moment is a few very minor investments.
“India is different. India is a democracy—imperfect, but a democracy. And there is a rule of law there where you know exactly where you stand. It’s a difficlt country. There are so many languages. We’re just beginning to spread beyond Hindi into other languages so our channels will become more national.”
Who’s to blame for the mounting crude oil prices? Oil producing countries? India and China for their voracious appetite? Speculators wanting to make a quick buck or ten?
In the latest episode of its media showThe Listening Post, hosted by Richard Gizbert, Al Jazeera English throws light on how the global media has failed to come to grips with a difficult but important issue.
The relationship between India and China has in recent months become, as the cliche goes, the cynosure of all eyes. Border roads and dams; military incursions; a row over the Dalai Lama; illegal Chinese workers on Indian soil, 
