Jeremy Paxman (principal news and current affairs presenter, BBC), Wang Hui (Head of Communications, City of Beijing) in the chair, Bai Yansong (principal news and current affairs presenter, CCTV)

Jeremy Paxman and China’s leading current affairs presenter and writer Bai Yansong joined Paul Jackson and David Morgenstern, from the UK television industry, at the the Future of Public Media workshop organised by the China Media Centre of the University of Westminster and the Communications University of China. The event took place in Beijing, China, on 12 January 2012.

The full-day workshop explored common experiences and challenges facing public media organisations in China and the UK. Contributors came from academic, journalistic, policy and business backgrounds and investigated where common interests and potential partnerships can exist despite real differences in media systems, giving participants the chance to identify areas of common interest and build the foundations for future partnerships.

The four visiting British speakers at the conference, with the Conference Director, Professor Hu Zhengrong. (From left to right: David Morgenstern, Paul Jackson, Professor Hu, Jeremy Paxman and Professor Hugo de Burgh)

Key speakers attending the workshop included:

From the United Kingdom

• Jeremy Paxman, the UK’s leading current affairs presenter.
• Paul Jackson, an outstanding UK TV producer, former executive producer of BBC and ITV’s entertainment departments.
• David Morgenstern, former director of BBC’s entertainment programme development department, currently Director of 10 Star company’s Programme R & D Department.
• Prof Hugo de Burgh, Director of China Media Centre, University of Westminster.

From China:

• Prof Hu Zhengrong, Deputy President of Communications University of China, Chairman of Chinese Media Research Association and the Honorary Doctor of the University of Westminster
• Bai Yansong, China’s leading current affairs presenter and writer.
• Yang Hua, Deputy Director of the CCTV News Centre
• Zhang Haichao, Deputy General Manager of China International Television Corporation (CITVC)
• Ren Xue’an, Deputy Director of CCTV Channel 1

China Central Television was the venue for a 2-day Workshop on British journalism organized by China Media Centre in October 2009. Speakers were Hugo de Burgh, CMC Director, Kevin Sutcliffe, C4’s Head of Current Affairs, Steve Hewlett, presenter of BBC’s The Media Show, Zhang Jie, Editor of CCTV’s News Investigation and Yang Rui, Presenter of CCTV’s Dialogue.

A one-day CMC seminar was held in the Houses of Parliament to address the implications of China’s management of its environmental challenges for government policy and British business. It was hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Group on China and sponsored by Norton Rose. 170 people attended, from business, the policy world and media.

One of CMC’s research themes, along with regulation, journalism and innovation in the media, is the relationship between media and environment. This seminar is one of several initiatives connected with this theme, including a workshop at Caijing magazine in  Peking, producing a report on journalism and the environment for International Media Support and being knowledge partner for the October Wilton Park Conference on China’s environment.

• Programme: 090625OnDayProgramme2x
• 306009 Speakers biographies

This is a conference of the China Media Centre for the APPCG, with Knowledge Partner, Norton Rose LLP. With assistance from the Chinese Embassy and Chinadialogue http://www.chinadialogue.net/

Boris Johnson

The Mayor of London and former MP for Henley

伦敦市长Boris Johnson中国之行

In 2006 the CMC arranged Boris Johnson MP’s first trip to China, when he was Conservative Higher Education Spokesman. He and the Director of CMC travelled together to Shanghai and Peking where they were filmed by BBC Newsnight.

Photo: Boris Johnson in China

2006年，时任影子内阁高等教育部发言人、现任伦敦市长Boris Johnson 在中国传媒中心的安排下，与中心主任戴雨果教授一起，展开了他的首次中国之行；他们在上海和北京的行程由BBC的新闻之夜栏目（News Night）摄制成专题节目在黄金时间播出。

Steam-rollering into the future (Review of Hugo de Burgh’s China: Friend or Foe?)

Boris Johnson

Spectator, Wednesday, 28th June 2006

You’d better hurry if you want to see any of old Beijing. The lovely higgledy-piggledy brick hutongs are being blitzed in readiness for the 2008 Olympics. Even in the Hou Hai district, supposedly one of the last zones of ancient tranquillity, the imperial lakes are fringed with trashy bars and ugly black sound systems spilling on to the pavement.

Not far away tourists are taken to inspect the old codgers playing chess and mah-jong, surrounded by caged birds. The oldsters like to look at the birdies, the tourist will be told in a whisper. It was one of the simple pleasures that Mao destroyed. The dictator took it into his head that it was an act of bourgeois decadence even to admire birdsong or plumage. So children went around banging tin trays and the birds were driven from the trees.

Photo: Boris Johnson joining in exercise at the Peking University.

As you look at these elderly victims of Maoist insanity, you can’t help wondering whether all the pundits are right about China. This is a place that still refuses to acknowledge the evil of Mao, and where his visage still hangs, fringed with tassels, from the rear-view mirror of buses. Are those mole-covered jowls really the face of the new China? Is it possible that this one-party state will achieve the kind of global dominance that some have recently forecast? In this clear, concise and fact-stuffed summary, Hugo de Burgh gives you all you need to make a pretty shrewd guess.

For those who think we’d all better take crash courses in Mandarin, the statistics are terrifying. China now consumes more red meat than any other country, and in the next five years will become a bigger trading nation than the US. Last year there were 50,000 miles of three-lane highway under construction, and new metro systems were being constructed in 26 cities, as well as 30 nuclear power stations. Shanghai has the world’s tallest hotel, the biggest shop, the highest television tower and the fastest train.

The Chinese middle class is exploding — I expect a thousand or so have been added to the ranks of the bourgeoisie since you began this article — and will number about 200 million this year. These are of course buying ever more cars, clothes and electrical appliances, and Goldman Sachs estimates that within ten years the Chinese will be buying 29 per cent of the world’s luxury goods. The Chinese are rapidly expanding their educational system, and they continue to excel in the crunchy subjects that British students find so off-putting. Almost 60 per cent of Chinese undergraduates study the sciences or engineering, compared to 36 per cent in the UK. How can they lose?

Well, as de Burgh points out, China is still a developing country, with per capita GDP of about $1,000 per year. We all have it in our heads that China is the world’s economic powerhouse; and yet the country is still afflicted by such poverty as to qualify for the world’s biggest slice of World Bank assistance. Never forget that the Chinese must feed a quarter of mankind with only 10 per cent of the world’s cultivable land, and with only 25 per cent of the global average per capita water supply.

That is why so much of China has been deforested or turned into a desert or a dump for nuclear waste, and the forced march to capitalism is producing anguish that can be every bit as painful as the Cultural Revolution. Villagers are killed if they protest against the expropriation of their land for development. In 2004 there were 74,000 protests of one kind or another, and yet there is no democratic outlet for these feelings.

Every university department has a party leader, every newspaper editor is under party control, and judicial decisions are subject to political review. Corruption is everywhere, tax is raised in a pretty arbitrary fashion, and a rickety social security system must cope with what promises to be the mother and father of all pensions crises — because each mother and father is only allowed one child, with the result that 27 per cent of the population will be over 60 by 2050.

Feed all these factors into your equation, and you begin to see why there is a case for a moderate sinoscepticism, a belief that all this hysteria about China may be slightly overdone. As Hugo de Burgh rightly concludes, there is no reason to fear China. She is no foe. He provides ample evidence that her march to global dominance will take much longer than some are currently predicting, and that in the meantime her integration to the capitalist system has been, on the whole, good for China and good for us. It’s Win Win, as some snazzy new Beijing nightclub has no doubt been auspiciously named.

The CMC director, Hugo de Burgh, joined the Chinese Ambassador Ms Fu Ying on a panel which also included the Lib-Dem Leader in the Upper House, Lord McNulty, and the Shadow Foreign Affairs Secretary Michael Moore MP.

WILTON PARK

The CMC partnered Wilton Park (an Executive Agency of the Foreign Office) with a conference called Working in China on Sustainable Growth — The Climate Change, Environment, Energy Nexus. The Vice Chancellor, Prof Geoffrey Petts, Visiting Professor Hu Zhengrong (Deputy President, China Communications University), Prof Hugo de Burgh and Dr Zeng Rong participated and represented University of Westminster. For further information please click on the link below.

Report on Wilton Park Conference WP1000 Final 281009

CONFERENCE ON BRITISH JOURNALISM

CUC and CMC are holding a conference in Beijing in October 2009. CMC is supplying 2 celebrity UK journalists Stephen Hewlett and Kevin Sutcliffe (paid for under the IMS contract) and its Director to speak at a CUC conference in October 2009. Steve Hewlett both presents The Media Show and writes regularly for The Guardian. He has a terrific track record as reporter and producer as well as in newspaper journalism.  Kevin Sutcliffe is Deputy Head of News & Current Affairs at C4 and has been responsible for the renaissance of the investigative series DISPATCHES. CUC has undertaken to provide an audience of influential media managers from the mainstream

FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR

Copyright by Frankfurt Book Fair

EU Commissioner Orban and Chinese Minister for Culture, a French Diplomat and the CMC Director are the speakers at the EU-China Forum at the Frankfurt Book Fair on 15 October.

STATE COUNCIL

The highest-level ever delegation from China’s State Council Information Office undertook a three week course designed for the China Media Centre by Simon Goldsworthy and Visiting Professor Trevor Morris, experts in branding and PR. Among the highlights were a colloquy with Lord Bell and senior figures at Chime Communications plc; visits to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Cabinet Office, the BBC and the Guardian Newspaper; talks about advertising from Sir Chris Powell and on the use of new media from former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson MP; and a lecture in Edinburgh from John Brown, a PR expert who formerly shared an office at Scottish TV with his brother the current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and CMC Director Professor Hugo de Burgh.

SUMMER SCHOOLS

The China Media Centre has held its first 2 Summer Schools for Chinese media students. In July this was directed by former Reuters Editor Paul Majendie and in September by TV producer Dr Richard Wright. The students both learnt about the European media and undertook practical tasks, making TV features under the direction of Journalism Head of Department Geoffrey Davies. Both summer schools were managed by Alja Kranjec, who hopes to hold at least two each year from now on.

INNOVATION 1

In October CMC launches another first, a course specially designed for Chinese TV executives by Dr Zeng Rong entitled Innovation, creativity and programme development in UK television. This course is full; if successful CMC expects to offer it twice each year.

The northern building of the new CCTV complex was caught fire on Feb. 9, at around 8:00pm. The fire spread quickly and soon the entire structure was in flames.

The 44-storey building, about 200 meters from the iconic CCTV tower, houses the Television Culture Center (TVCC), the luxury Mandarin Oriental Hotel and an electronic data processing center.

According to Juliet Ye of WSJ, “people packed China’s online forums and blogs, uploaded pictures taken from the fiery scene and hit the streets to conduct their own reporting.” You can also find some collections in Danwei, or CNReviews, and “A Photo Play Of The CCTV Fire”, from ESWN. Click here to see the video filmed by BBC staffs.

The incident hasn’t been featured all that prominently on news portal front pages. An unproven guideline on the fire report was distributed online,

“All networks:

Regarding the “CCTV New North Side Building on Fire” report, all sites must use only the Xinhua news script. Do not post pictures, videos; do not report in depth; only post in Domestic (Chinese) news; close all posts and replies; do not put this as the “top topic”; do not place this in “Recommended Articles”.” — source: CNReviews.com

It turned out that CCTV itself is responsible for Monday’s massive fire (via China Daily). At the day after the fire, an office director at CCTV and 11 others have been detained by the Beijing police for questioning, according to state news agency Xinhua. Chinese continued to dissect the event online with a sardonic tilt. See EEO’s story about Chinese online reaction.

Via China Digital Time,

China’s young and hottest blogger Han Han (韩寒) took fire at CCTV once again. This blogpost, written on Feb. 11, has once again been deleted from his Sina blog, but remains on the recently “resurrected” Bullog International website (hosted in United States.) The witty, sarcastic content is being re-posted by thousands of netizens within the Great Firewall.

You can find Han Han’s article in English (translated by CDT) in the link above.

The China Blog of TIME, “The Problem With CCTV” mentioned a pointed critique of one recent CCTV program after the fire.

Publishing still hot

China Daily says, Publishing still hot on bourses,

If you think the publishing industry is going irreversibly downhill in this Internet age, think again. It is fast becoming one of the hottest sectors in the Chinese stock market, thanks to government support, in a big way.

The State Council issued a new provision last year to support development of the culture industry. It is believed that the policy has underscored the future profits and development of publishing companies. Below is another news about publishing industry in China, “Media reform in China by the end of 2010, says GAPP”,

“By the end of 2010, all for-profit news media and publishing entities will be decoupled from the government institutions they are affiliated with and transformed into separate companies. The government will no longer place restrictions on them in terms of ISBN numbers, publication licenses, and content.”

Journalist “black list”

Via Reuters,

Li Dongdong, a deputy chief of the General Administration of Press and Publication, told officials that proposed strengthened regulations for Chinese journalists would include a “full database of people who engage in unhealthy professional conduct”, the China News Service reported.

“People entered into the transgressor list will be excluded from engaging in news reporting and editing work,” the report said, citing Li.

Other links you might be interested in

• Danwei: Hoax dictionary entries about legendary obscene beasts
• Danwei: Youku’s plans for 2009
• MacKinnon’s Research Paper: China’s Censorship 2.0: How companies censor bloggers

“Oxford may be rueing the day it decided to enter its researchers into the communication [category], the institution was beaten by… Westminster” – Times Higher Education Magazine

“A media studies department at a former polytechnic is among the top-rated academic centres in Britain in the latest official rankings of the quality of university research. Sixty per cent of the research published by the school of Media Arts and Design at Westminster University… was rated as “world-leading” by the Research Assessment Exercise”. – The Times

Communications, cultural and media studies research at the University of Westminster has been shown to be “world-leading” following the announcement today of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results.

Researchers across a broad range of subjects at the University, which is a leading post-92 institution, have had their work shown to be of international quality in the latest assessment of UK university research activity. Nearly 80 per cent of Westminster’s research was found to be of a quality that is recognised internationally for its “originality, significance and rigour”.

Art and Design, Architecture and the Built Environment, Geography and Environment Studies and Law also stood out for the international quality of the research.

Sally Feldman, dean of the University’s School of Media, Arts and Design, said: “This is a fantastic result and a reflection of the excellent scholarship, research and practice that characterises our work here at Westminster.”

The RAE, the first since 2001, highlights Westminster’s traditional strength across a broad range of research activity, said Vice-Chancellor Professor Geoffrey Petts.

“This result highlights that the University of Westminster is producing research of international quality across a broad range of subjects, with communications and media studies world-leading in their work.

“We were assessed in 20 areas of work, which is an indication of the breadth of our work as well as the quality. It is also an indication that our research is being recognised for its potential to make a real difference in the world.

“I’m delighted Westminster was found to be so strong, especially as we are one of the group of universities created in 1992 that have traditionally received less funding than longer-established, research-led universities.”

The RAE, the first since 2001, saw 159 higher education institutions submitting their research to the Higher Education Funding Council for England for assessment. Over 200,000 individual pieces of research work were submitted.

—-From the website of University of Westminster.And here is a related article written in Chinese, from Chinese news media.

China Media Center 2008 Autumn Term Seminars

Culture and Corruption in Contemporary China

Speaker: Dr. Katie Hill
Date: Wednesday 10 December 2008
Time: 2-3.30 pm
Venue: Room A3.16, Harrow Campus, University of Westminster

Dr. Katie Hill is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Art at the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster. She is currently developing the Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture Project, a new resource base that will comprise a website, a bibliographic database, and an archive of all aspects of visual culture in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Chinese diaspora. This initiative will build on the Chinese Poster Collection at CSD (of which Dr Hill is in charge), a collection of more than 600 posters from China, 500 of which are available online.

In this seminar, Dr. Hill is hoping to raise ways of thinking about the notion of corruption in the Chinese cultural context, so she will welcome at least twenty minutes of discussion around this theme.

If you have any inquiry about CMC events, please contact George Dawei Guo at georgedawei@yahoo.com.cn or call 020 8357 7354.

CMC 2008 Autumn Term Seminars

The Transformation of Chinese Media, Ideology and System Change

Speaker: Pro. Zhengrong Hu

Date: Friday 21 November 2008

Time: 5-7 pm

Venue: Room A4.13, Harrow Campus

University of Westminster

Dr. Zhengrong Hu is a Professor in Communication and the Vice President of the Communication University of China (CUC). Prof. Hu is also the Director of the National Centre for Radio & TV Studies at CUC and the President of the Chinese Association of Communication (CAC). He is very well known in China and internationally as one of the leading scholars of media regulation. Prof. Hu was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at CAMRI from February to August 2006 and a Research Fellow at Harvard University 2005-2006.

This seminar will be given in English.

If you have any inquiry about CMC events, please contact George Dawei Guo at georgedawei@yahoo.com.cn or call 020 8357 7354.

China’s Media Handlers

学术研讨会：新闻发言人与政府公关

A key issue in modern public affairs, following the Tibet crisis and Sichuan disaster, and before the Olympics.

Who are the people who manage media relations in China? How do they work?

当今中国，谁在协调政府与媒体及公众的关系？他们如何工作？

2008年6月6日，中国传媒中心在伦敦举办了一场公开讨论会，讨论的问题集中在当代中国的政府新闻发言人制度，主要探讨在西藏事件、四川地震之后以及奥运会之前的阶段，中国政府与媒体的关系。

Steven Guanpeng Dong

Trainer of China’s official spokesmen for the State Council Information Office; former CCTV journalist and Lecturer at Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism and Communication

In the chair: David Hill, formerly Tony Blair’s Director of Communications, now working at Bell Pottinger Group

with Lord (Tim) Bell

Host: Professor Simon Jarvis, Pro Vice-Chancellor,

University of Westminster

Entry is free and open to all