Monday, January 28, 2008

Protection of information

I earned a welcome few bucks over the weekend conducting English assessments on staff of the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The Agency's office compound is rather an intimidating set-up - heavily guarded by sentries from the People's Liberation Army (rather than the police, or the shabby private security firms that most institutions make do with) - and much better-dressed and more intimidating ones than most of those who guard the foreign Embassies.

This is, after all, still a totalitarian country: news can be regarded as a 'state secret', to be guarded with tasers and pistols.

Xinhua, by the way, means 'Newspeak'. The irony is unintentional. They don't seem to have heard of Orwell here.  [Ah, I stand corrected on this last point.  Apparently, it's rather than , the hua that means 'China' rather than the one that means 'language'. Pity!]
 

3 comments:

The British Cowboy said...

Isn't the general populace's opinion simply a product of nationalism? I mean don't you find similar entrenched views in the UK & Eire regarding the status of Northern Ireland, and regarding Irish history in general? I mean, if you speak to most American Irish, Ireland was a happy skippy unified democracy before the British invaded. The view on the potato famine are also somewhat distorted.

The British Cowboy said...

Damn it - this was meant to be a response to the Taiwan post!

Froog said...

Cowboy, if you comment when logged in under your username, you do have the facility to delete them subsequently.

Or I could delete for you.... but I enjoy seeing the evidence of your errors displayed to the world.