As you may or may not know March 5th was the start of the annual National
People's Congress in China. At a meeting Sunday night with the head of the
Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China which is headed by Li
Changchun. This department is directly controlled by the Politburo Standing
Committee have called the cuts at the BBC World Service and the proposed cuts to
the Voice Of America as a victory for "the Communist Party of China and the
fight against the West", in speech to members of his department. In the
un-publisized speech he said with the Western media outlets losing the media
war, it will give China a chance to dominate the international airwaves. Li
Changchun also announced that China will spend 52 000 000 Yuan (8 million USD)
starting this year to expand it's reach to international audiences. This
includes satellite broadcasts, "taking over AM/FM stations in the west", and
expanding China's use of shortwave to the Americas, Europe, Africa and South
East Asia. China will also be looking at taking over relay stations once used to
broadcast to the PRC by the West "who have mis-informed the people of China to
create an un-stable society".
A proposal by the Politburo Standing Committee will be submitted to the high
level officials of the Communist Party of China on March 8th to combine CCTV 4
and 9 (international) and China Radio International into one, to "take over the
airwaves of the imperialist aggressors of stations like the BBC and the Voice Of
America".
This information comes to me from a source I can not name to protect his
identity as they work in the documents office at Zhongnanhai, the main
headquarters of the CPC. I got this information this morning March 7th.
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2 comments:
Hopefully VOA and BBC, among others, will see the error in their decisions. The vast majority of the people they were trying to reach do not have regular or reliable access to the web-based programming, live streams or podcasts. The message they are trying to get out will not be received by their target audience. Seems silly to abandon what for some is the only source of information; ie Shortwave.
China obviously understands their demographic/reach much better than the others.
"Fight against the west?"
This is just sick to the core, and each time communism sees some sort of victory whether real or perceived, it gets that much harder for free communications to take place.
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