China: Beyond the village gates

7 May 2008 | Comment

The estimated 30,000 journalists expected to converge on Beijing for the 2008 Olympiad need to prepare themselves well in advance before they blunder across one of the world’s least understood and most volatile domestic political stages, writes Rohan Jayasekera

The XXIX Olympiad in Beijing will be covered by an expected 20,000 accredited sports media workers — and another 10,000 unaccredited. That’s more than three journalists for every athlete. How will China react to this influx of independent opinion if the focus comes off sport and on to politics?

January 2008 rules introduced for the Games theoretically allow foreign journalists to report freely on Chinese ‘politics, economy, society, and culture’ until next October.

This promised liberalisation came to a sharp halt following the outbreak of violent protests in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on 10 March. Beijing responded with a news blackout, expelling foreign reporters from Beijing, Tibet and its neighbouring provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China has recorded more than 230 abuses of the new rules. Until March things were getting better, BBC World News Editor Jon Williams told a conclave of Chinese and Western journalists and media rights activists in Paris in April. ‘Now they’re as difficult as they’ve been for a long time.’
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