Nothing Fake about It, China Awash in Lies

BEIJING — It started with a steamed bun stuffed with cardboard.

After a Beijing television station reported last month that city vendors were cutting costs by replacing pork in buns with shredded cardboard, China's ministry of propaganda announced that the news item — not the food — was fraudulent.

In China, where leaders routinely cover-up accidents and pressure the media to spin stories, the announcement set off a chorus of protest on the Web.

"Probably the government just said the news was fake because they were worried it would scare foreigners coming to Beijing for the Olympics," said one of many postings on a popular Web site, blanca.com.cn.

"It doesn't matter if the bun was fake or the news was fake. Everywhere you look, everything is fake," a post by someone using the screen name Lonely Kiss added.

The comments highlight what many Chinese see as a crisis of trust undermining Beijing's governance and damaging the country's export-heavy economy.

As China comes under increased scrutiny in the United States and elsewhere for tainted products from kids' toys to dog food, the government faces increasing risks by downplaying the problems, says a Beijing author who has documented food safety problems.

"The government doesn't want anything to damage sales of Chinese products overseas, but if they don't increase transparency, no one will believe them," said Zhou Qing.

The 42-year-old Beijing author's most recent book documents dozens of safety problems with Chinese-produced foods including pigs fed poisonous chemicals and soy sauce containing human hair.

In the wake of recent food scandals, Beijing's propaganda ministry instructed Chinese media to minimize reporting on food safety problems, Zhou and other Chinese said. That has left many Chinese skeptical of local news reports.

Chinese officials often suppress bad news because they fear upsetting the public or their bosses or to prevent economic losses.

After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recalled chemical-contaminated wheat gluten in March, Beijing announced that no Chinese wheat gluten had been exported to the United States or Canada for use in pet food.

But after the gluten — which was blamed for the deaths of an unknown number of American pets — was traced to two Chinese companies, Chinese inspectors admitted it had come from the country.

When the FDA in June recalled Chinese-made toothpastes containing diethylene glycol, a chemical commonly used in antifreeze, Beijing officials responded that the chemical was not harmful in toothpaste. One month later, however, Beijing banned use of the ingredient in toothpaste.

Attempts to mask bad news are not limited to product safety issues. In one recent case, officials in China's central Henan province ordered journalists not to write about a mudslide that had leveled a town, killing dozens of people, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported this month.

"The selective news blackout suggests that suppression of bad news remains an unedifying habit that dies hard on the mainland," the Hong Kong newspaper said in an editorial.

The gag order was reminiscent of Beijing's efforts in 2003 to stifle reports of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a pandemic that eventually spread to 30 countries and killed nearly 800 people.

Beijing likely repressed news about the spread of SARS to minimize economic losses, said Zhang Guoliang, dean of Shanghai Jiaotong University's journalism school, adding that international anger at their handling of the crisis "taught them they have to allow more media freedom."

"It's very important that people trust the media," he said. "Without trust in our media, we are all like blind men."

Because media outlets around the world had carried reports of the cardboard-stuffed buns, the news "created public concerns both in China and overseas and caused extremely bad social impacts," China's propaganda department said in a statement.

Last Sunday a Beijing court sentenced Chinese journalist Zi Beijia to one year of jail and a $132 fine for "infringing commodity reputation" by creating the false news report, China's state media reported.

Judging by the debate over whether cardboard-filled buns had been sold in Beijing, many Chinese trust neither their government nor the media.

In Beijing, a taxi driver surnamed Wang said no average citizen could be sure whether the buns or the news were false.

"In China, you can't trust anyone else, so you have to think for yourself," he said.

Dozens of messages posted to Chinese Web sites voiced similar concerns.

"We'll never know whether the journalist made up the (bun) story to become famous or the government forced Beijing Television to retract the story to ensure stability and harmony," a post on a Chinese newspaper Web site forum said.

"Nowadays, everyone is trying to trick everyone else, so I don't think we can trust anything."