The WSJ‘s China Real Time column heartily approves of the guide to CCTV (China Central Television) posted by The World of Chinese:
… it’s a very handy guide to interpreting CCTV’s newspeak on the Network News at seven o’clock (Xinwen Lianbo新闻联播). It describes how CCTV sets the tone on the key issues of the day — every day, rain or shine — and in a nutshell some of their key observations are:
- Your remote will be rendered useless and there is no place to hide. Central, provincial, city and local channels are all required to broadcast the program
- Unplugging the TV won’t help as the same message awaits you on websites and newspapers the following day
- No issue is too small when it comes to practicing the core values of socialism
For readers who are studying Chinese, the post also offers handy examples of the program’s particular phraseology — a sparse and wooden collection of stock formulations all too familiar to some of CRT’s more grizzled correspondents. A few of our favorites: “The two sides carried out an affable and friendly discussion” (双方进行了亲切友好的会谈), “[Insert country here] reaffirms that it objects to any forces threatening to undermine Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity” ( ___ 重申，反对任何破坏中国国 家主权和领土完整的势力), “The Chinese side highly praised the [insert country here] government’s efforts to always adhere to the one-China policy. (中方高度赞赏 ___ 政府始终坚持一个中国政策的立场)
To further the understanding of the uninitiated, we offer a few observations of our own:
- The chairman always tops the news no matter how irrelevant his activities were that day
- Nobody makes unimportant speeches
- Nobody ever says what was in the important speeches
- Long handshakes with unrecognizable visiting dignitaries always make interesting TV
- China’s position is always reasonable
- The world outside China’s borders is a frightening miasma of natural disasters, political crises and economic ruin.
To understand that last bullet point, you only have to watch a few minutes of MSNBC or Fox News.
