China Learns The Yin And Yang Of PR
China’s having some wee riots by a few troublesome dead-ender Uighurs. Hundreds are dead. The media always wants to “cover” things like this. China has a new media management strategy, though: savvy PR! The Uighurs have a counter-strategy: breaking shit.
China’s normal strategy when these things happen is to lock down the city in question, flood it with cops, push out state propaganda, silence the internet, and tell foreign reporters nothing. This time, though, they’ve organised a nice media tour! Discount hotel rooms, official briefings, ready-made photo montages, and all.
Journalists were invited Tuesday morning on a government-escorted tour of one of the Uighur neighborhoods hit hardest by the violence. But they were explicitly barred from conducting any interviews without government minders present, and television journalists who sought to wander on their own were reported to have been stopped by police or paramilitary officers who demanded that they turn over their film.
Not much different from covering the White House, really. Give it a few years and you’ll see fat foreign reporters gorging themselves on spring rolls and summarising press releases from the central government. But the crafty Uighurs responded with some inspirational protestations—they “smashed the windshield of a police car and several police officers drew their pistols before the entire crowd was encircled by officers and paramilitary troops in riot gear.”
All right in front of reporters, which gave them good ways to lead their stories, rendering all the hard work the Chinese put into those official briefings practically useless! [SIGH]. Don’t worry, repressive Chinese authorities. Once you get the press corps fat and happy, all this muckraking is over. Trust us.
[Pic via a good video at The Guardian]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@SultanaEleusis:
Discover what happens when you get serious with rice?
gzfcommenter02
gzfcommenter02
@gzfstar01: You guys need to buy better radios.
Not The Red Baron
@ithabeleng metesunyane: You're Dreaming.
gzfstar01
I wonder what the Uighers might do if they were deported to Iran?
SultanaEleusis
@Aidan_: *"Choke the rivers with your dead" tactics.
Aidan_
@ithabeleng metesunyane: Wow, aren't you a fun guy?
The idea behind protests of this nature, and I may be wrong here, but it seems to me the idea is that you make keeping you down and repressed too costly and tiring. All these struggles, throughout history, have essentially been arm-wrestling contests to see which group can be more stubborn. "Choke the rivers with your dead" only have two outcomes though: 1) You win! The government/company/church/whatever just got sick of dealing with the bullshit and gave into your demands. Or 2) You lose! Nobody's left to carry the fight because all the effected people are dead or left.
Aidan_
@Mymoustache: Magnificent
@DaveDavies:
maybe if the US government showed that kind of discipline things wouldnt be so bad here
What's all the hubub about? We all know how this is going to end. The government is just going to shoot everyone and that will be that.
DaveDavies
If they would just pull up their pants, straighten their baseball caps and talk right a lot of this could be avoided.
Mymoustache
As the late, great MJ sang: "With such confusions, don't it make you wanna break a screen".
Not The Red Baron
I kept hearing this on the radio as yesterday as a fight between the Huan and Wiggers.
You can take the Uighur out of the desert but you can't take the desert out of the Uighur.
On a more serious note, I wonder if this new friendliness to journalists is part of China's recent media push: [www.foreignpolicy.com]
Teach an Uighur to smash a windshield and he lives for a day. Give a journalist a spring roll and he kisses your ass for a lifetime.
Why oh why must they always take it out on the vehicles?
kneetoe
@Claire Buoyant:
I wish someone would banish me to Bermuda. Even if it meant working in a kitchen.
Round'em up, send them to Bermuda, and force them to work in Mexican restaurants.
I dated an Uighur in college.
They are very hot tempered but real romantics.