The Communist Party claims that its media is "the mouthpiece of the party," and, with few exceptions, it has succeeded. After reporting in China, it's strange to attend an event in DC and be reminded that there exists a thriving Chinese anti-Communist Party media.
At a press event today for Xi Jinping's visit to Washington roughly a quarter of the Chinese media in attendance seemed to be Falun Gong, the spiritual sect banned in China and once practiced by as many as 70 million Chinese, whose affiliates run the "Global Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party," and other services dedicated to informing Chinese people that other options exist. These included the television broadcaster New Tang Dynasty and the newspaper the
Epoch Times, best known for issuing a press pass to Wang Wenyi, the Chinese
national who heckled
Hu Jintao during a joint press conference at the White House with George W. Bush in 2006.
This year the reporters are much quieter, sitting near, but
not next to the rest of the Chinese media. "They don't invite us to their
functions," said one Falun Gong-affiliated reporter. Another, Kitty Wang, a senior reporter from
NDTV in Washington DC who left China in 2000, explains that she sees an
educational function in her reporting. "We feel that we're giving the true info
the Chinese citizens, and let them use it as they see fit," she said, as we
watched Xi speak on the screen in front of us. "We found that many people doing
media had the government viewpoint, so we wanted to provide the other side."
Unsurprisingly, she's not sanguine about the Party's future.
"Now the Communist Party is just trying to survive. There are people who
recognize the wickedness of the Party, and so they have left it. They know that
one day, when the Party falls, that they will be held responsible for
participating."
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