My column at 21cbh

http://21cbh.com/businesslife/author.asp?Id=123,

In case you can read Chinese, I’m sharing my my Chinese column at 21cbh, an influential  Chinese business newspapers- China’s WSJ.

My content  is casual, talking about lifestyles, culture difference between the U.S. and China, and how hard to raise a kid in the U.S..

New Website Launched

I’ll keep writing on a specific issue these four months, keeping an eye on regular worker’s lives during the economic turmoil. The website, ran by Kate Zhao and Mark Morales, is named “Worker United”.

Hope you enjoy reading it.

Happy Birthday, Carolyn!

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Free Media, Free Expression

A few months ago, When I interviewed Mr. Craig Newman, founder of craigslist.com, and wrote a news story about him and published it in a Chinese newspaper. A few days later, I saw another story about Mr. Newman in a Chinese magazine. Half of the story was exactly copied from my story.

Being a freelance writer for a few years, this wasn’t the first time I saw my stories got stolen. But this time, my story was blatantly stolen by a so-called famous columnist. My editor and I made direct contact with the newspaper. However, like most of our other complaints, our calls ended up without attention.

This case more or less exemplifies the current disorder in China’s media, which is mostly controlled by government institutions. Argument with media equals arguing with the government.

My long-held belief is the media is a channel providing truth to the public. This belief, however, has been constantly challenged when I was a freelance reporter, or even when I worked as a PR staffer. In the latter case, I often found the published story was always a distortion of real facts. Somehow I can understand why the media is doing this. The media has its own interest and preference; they have propagandistic tasks; eye-catching is very important for attracting more audience: those are all factors that often steer Chinese media away from the fundamental principles of accuracy and equality. Finally the agenda setting makes the public into the spiral of silence.

I am now staying in the U.S., and am enjoying the “luxury” of freely reading and writing. Many of my friends in China have big apartments and drive BMWs, but they can only watch government-owned TV stations and read highly censored books. I feel I am much richer than them. I’d like to share with you my thoughts and opinions on China’s booming economy, slow and disappointing democratic reform from an outside look. You can also reach me at ying.zhao@journalism.cuny.edu.