Why Chinese officials should better engage international media instead of faulting them for not understanding China well?

They should take a look in the mirror before they fault the international media for rising pessimism about China’s growth prospects and brutal sell-offs of China-related stocks.

Thought of the Day on China

Fang Xinghai, a deputy chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, has become the latest senior Chinese official to diss the international media and blame their reports for rising pessimism about China’s growth prospects and brutal sell-offs of China-related stocks.

Speaking at the Global Financial Leaders Investment Summit in Hong Kong on November 2, Fang said that as someone who dealt with international investors on a daily basis, he believed some of them had read too much into the foreign media reports about China.

International media “don’t really understand China very well” and have a “short-term focus,” he said.

Fang urged investors to visit China to understand what is happening in the country and urged them not to “bet against” China and Hong Kong.

Fang is not alone among Chinese officials who hold the view that the international media are biased towards China. At the high-profile summit which attracted more than 200 global financial executives, Liu Jin, the president of Bank of China, also asked investors not to put too much stock in negative news.

All this has raised a very interesting question: if investors should not read too much into the international media which don’t really understand China very well, where should they get information about China?

Fang’s invitation to international investors to visit China sounds disingenuous. Because of draconian Covid restrictions, China has basically shut the country off over the past three years.

For the brave souls to visit the country, they will have to endure 10 days of mandatory quarantine upon arrival as the rest of the world is pretty much opening up. The Chinese government is believed to reduce the number of quarantine days to seven soon but for most people, that is still probably too much.

To compound the misery, people will find it very difficult to travel within the country. A snap or a partial lockdown can happen in any city without any notice and travelers could be stranded for days or weeks, often much longer than the mandatory quarantine time.

China still has a long road to reopening for business.

Of course, Chinese officials would prefer the investors to read President Xi Jinping’s landmark political report to the Communist Party’s 20th congress last month as he laid out China’s development priorities over the next five years.  

Have many people really read the English version of the report from the beginning to the end? I did but even for someone who writes and reports about China for the past three decades, I find it a tough going as the translation of the party’s favorite jargons, littered through the report, make them even more difficult to understand.

As for China’s state media, their reports reek of pure propaganda and lack credibility, particularly after Xi publicly told the official media that their surname was the Party and they must follow the Party line.

The party and government frequently hold press conferences to have officials explain policies and address questions, often broadcast live on national television.

But those officials mostly read from the prepared statements and questions from reporters are screened in advance to avoid awkward and politically sensitive issues.

At a time when the leadership stresses discipline and loyalty, officials are even afraid of paraphrasing, let alone explaining the nuances of the policies and leaders’ remarks.

 A case in point is that at the first press conference to explain the significance of Xi’s report to the congress, five senior Chinese officials responded to questions from the media by apparently reading jargon-filled sections from the report.

To Fang’s credit, he is one of the few senior Chinese officials who is willing to attend international forums and speak to investors in English.

But the fact remains that most of the Chinese officials have deliberately chosen to stay away from the international media.

Shouldn’t they take a look in the mirror before they fault the international media for not “understanding China very well”?

As things go, the international media landscape is dominated by the English-language western media organizations. Their reports and commentaries about China not only influence their own readers in their countries also other media outlets and the people in the rest of the world, ranging from investors to decision makers to ordinary people alike.

At a time when the outside world becomes increasingly uncertain of China’s commitment to opening up and reform, finding ways on how to better engage the international media is a must for Chinese leaders and officials.

End.