27th May 2007
My third book, The Pool of Unease, which comes out in August, has as its backdrop some of the less savoury aspects of modern China – rampant corruption, poverty and beggar gangs, a sense that criminal activity is on the rise as society changes fast and often chaotically.
Several years ago, when I was working as a journalist in Beijing, I was scolded by a Chinese foreign ministry official for ‘looking at the dust in the corner of the room and ignoring the chandelier hanging in the centre of the room,’ so I know that this is sensitive ground.
Of course, I write thrillers, and it is a genre that requires the writer to look at the dark underbelly of society. A thriller devoid of dirty, dusty corners is not a thriller.
The Chinese press is controlled by the Ministry of Propaganda (this is another theme in The Pool of Unease), and the Ministry of Propaganda would like nothing better than a media full of chandeliers. But Communist Party control of the media, as of everything, is increasingly patchy and undermined by the market. The state has reduced its subsidies to many newspapers, which means they are more dependent on advertising revenue and therefore on circulation, which means providing readers with journalism that they want to read. Of course this doesn’t necessarily mean accurate journalism, or worthwhile journalism, and indeed it is common practice these days for Chinese journalists to be paid by corporations to write glowing reports of these products.
One of the things I like to read is a page titled ‘China Scene’ in the China Daily (this is in English, the lazy way to read the Chinese press, an easy way to start the day). It is a largely chirpy collection of humorous and uplifting tidbits from the Chinese press. On Friday we had, ‘Group Effort Returns Fallen Bird to Nest’ from the China Business Review, ‘Pet Dog Earns Its Keep by Snatching Purse Thief,’ from the Henan Commercial Daily – you get the picture.
But scattered among these brief reports are always one or two that make me stop and frown in disbelief. On Friday, there was ‘Suspected Ghost Wife Murderer in Detention’ from Beijing News. Which read, in its entirety, as follows:
Police in Linzhang County, Hebei, have detained a suspect in the murders of six women, most of them mentally retarded, for the purpose of selling their corpses as ghost wives for dead men.
Starting last year, Song Tiantang, a 53-year old farmer, has allegedly been killing women and then selling their corpses to people seeking spouses for their dead family members, mostly unmarried men. The practice of marrying the dead is an old one, and is still followed in a few remote rural villages. Police appealed to villagers to drop the custom because it is illegal and could lead to murder.
Granted, China is a vast country with a vast population, so even the most appalling story is, in effect, diluted. Granted, the original article may have been longer and more prominent. Nevertheless, I find it interesting that a dark story like this makes its way into the English language press only as a 100-word brief, and buried among the funnies. The distortion of news values here (and of course they’re distorted in other ways in England, I’m not saying they’re not) is, of course, an indication of just how powerful China’s propaganda machine remains, despite so many changes. And it’s also a reminder to those who see the modern skyscrapers of Beijing and its glittering malls and restaurants, that all is not as entirely rosy as it seems.