China reports UK shoe-throwing
China’s carefully-controlled state broadcaster finally showed the sensitive footage of a protester in Britain shouting “dictator” and throwing a shoe at leader Wen Jiabao.
The move yesterday was an unusual display of openness – but the footage was already leaking into China via satellite television and the internet. Critics said it showed the increasing power of such media to erode strict information controls.
“It is impossible for a country to shut out a piece of news,” said Shao Peiren, head of Zhejiang University’s communications research institute in eastern China.
Incidents that could be seen as unflattering or insulting to the Chinese leadership have long been treated with the greatest sensitivity. The first Chinese reports on the protest during Mr Wen’s visit to Britain’s Cambridge University left out key details, including that a shoe had been thrown.
But the China Central Television broadcast showed the footage among the first stories of its half-hour broadcast, leading in to it with a report on Mr Wen’s speech itself and his return to Beijing.
Then the shoe-throwing footage was shown, with no commentary from the anchors.
The camera was fixed on Mr Wen, but later cut to the whistle-blowing protester being removed from the hall, while the audience shouted “Get out”.
“Teachers and students, this kind of dirty trick cannot stop the friendship between the Chinese and the British people,” Mr Wen said at the time.
The incident echoed the news conference in December in which an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at former US president George Bush – covered widely not only in China but around the world.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu called the disruption “despicable” but said it would not “stem the tide of friendly relations between China and Britain”.
“The uncompromising Iraqi people threw a shoe at Bush which is a brave act by a suppressed nation,” one comment read on the Tiexue.net internet bulletin board, adding: “But the ugly Englishman threw a shoe at Wen, which was only a barbaric trick.”
In an apparent move to show national dignity had been maintained, reports by CCTV and the official Xinhua News Agency included prominent references to Britain apologising.
