5:46 am HKT Jun 17, 2014
People’s Daily Press
Chinese journalist and blogger Fang Kecheng turned heads five years ago when he compiled a list of the instances in which China’s feelings had been hurt by people abroad, as catalogued by party newspaper the People’s Daily. (The ultimate tally? According to Mr. Fang’s count, at that time the feelings of the Chinese people had been hurt at least some 58 times by Japan and 27 times by the U.S.)
This year, he’s again created waves with “The Old Friends of the Chinese People.” Published this spring, Mr. Fang’s book examines the question of who, according to state media, has been awarded the title of an “old friend of the Chinese people” and why.
China Real Time recently spoke with the author via phone from Wisconsin, where he is currently pursuing a Ph. D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Edited excerpts, translated from the Chinese:
What prompted you to research China’s “old friends”?
When I was at the Southern Weekly [newspaper] in spring 2011, it was the time of the Arab Spring and a lot of people were talking about it online. People were talking about Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s [Moammar] Gadhafi, who were being unseated. They were being called “old friends of the Chinese people.” At the time, there was a kind of joke that the world had three big kinds of endangered species: pandas, golden-haired monkeys and China’s “old friends.” At the time, there were orders that we couldn’t directly talk about [the Arab spring]. But “old friends” was something that we could use to talk about it indirectly, and meanwhile people were interested to talk about it. So I thought the phenomenon was worth researching.
You previously wrote about China’s “hurt feelings.” How did this work build on that?
In 2008, when I’d just become a graduate student, I wrote a blog about which countries have hurt the feelings of Chinese people. The blog was shared widely. At the time, I’d used the People’s Daily database to search, and to see in what kind of context people were considered to have “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” Those most frequently raised were Japan, America and NATO. I thought this strategy was pretty good, as the paper is the party’s mouthpiece, so it’s a pretty authoritative source. When it came to which people were officially considered “old Chinese friends,” I used the same method. There were 601 people who were considered China’s old friends.
Fang Kecheng
Who were China’s best friends? Were there any surprises?
Apart from [American journalist] Edgar Snow, there’s also Cambodia’s Norodom Sihanouk. The country that produced the most ‘old friends’ for China was Japan, followed by the United States, though the U.S. didn’t have even half so many as Japan.
As for profession, it varied according to the period of time. The book is divided into four sections, each dealing with a different period. The first is pre-1949, in which the “old friends” designated by the Chinese Communist Party were mostly authors and journalists. They came to China to interview the Communist Party, produced positive reports and helped the world learn about the existence of the party.
There were also doctors, the most famous of who is [Canadian] Norman Bethune, who came to China to help people, to tend to those injured Communist Party members. I think those who came before 1949 were the purest of China’s “old friends.” At the time, there was no way to predict the outcome of events, but they still chose to help the Communist Party. Many were full of idealism and feeling when they came to China. I personally admire them.
And after 1949?
After 1949, those called “old friends” were mostly leaders of the Third World. At the time, China was rather isolated globally. The Cold War had erupted and it was being cold-shouldered by the United States.
The third period is mostly composed of those who helped China re-establish diplomatic relations. For example, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Nixon’s reputation in the U.S. is very bad, but in China it’s very good, because when it came to establishing relations with the U.S., he played an important role. Even after Watergate, in China, he was still very popular.
The fourth group is comprised of those after economic reform—those who helped China enter international organizations. For example, the famous prior head of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, who helped China become the host of the Olympics.
Does official media continue to use this term at all?
Yes, but less and less frequently. Many ‘old friends’ have died, and this word isn’t used that often in foreign relations any longer. According to data from the People’s Daily, since 1997, the term has been continuously on the decline. There were some high periods of usage: in 1978, during reform-and-opening up, when China needed the help of ‘old friends’; the second was in 1990, after the Tiananmen Square incident, when China was really isolated and needed its ‘old friends’ to help it recover its international relations. The last was in 1997, when Deng Xiaoping died, and Hong Kong returned to Chinese power, so many country’s leaders were making condolences or congratulations, and many were being referenced as ‘old friends.’
My statistics only went as far as 2010. In that year, there were just 17 people who were named ‘old Chinese friends.’
During the publishing process, did you run into any problems with censors?
Not too much was changed. I did some self-censorship. For example, one of the most famous “old friends of China” is American journalist Edgar Snow. His second wife—they were married in 1949—is Lois Wheeler Snow, who was also considered an “old friend” of China. But in 1989, after the Tiananmen Square incident, she was shocked and angered, and used her status to try and express her protestations to Chinese leaders. She found it was of no use. When she heard of Ding Zilin, of the Tiananmen Mother’s Group, an organization made up of mothers of victims, she wrote Ding Zilin a letter and tried to give her money. But the letter and monetary donation were intercepted by the government. When she came to China, she was also prevented from seeing Ding Zilin face-to-face.
So this was a story that you voluntarily excised?
I voluntarily on my own evaded this kind of sensitive topic before the book ever reached authorities. This kind of story is worth writing, but I had no ability to write it in my book. I just wrote in the forward, “There are some ‘old friends’ who’ve always paid attention to the rights of Chinese citizens,” and what I meant by that was her.
– Edited from an interview with Te-Ping Chen
From:http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/06/17/from-doctors-to-kings-who-are-chinas-old-friends/