[Correspondent’s Column] China’s Global Times news miscast as “government-run” news outlet

The outlandish rhetoric often distorts the official position of the Chinese government

The Global Times is a Chinese newspaper that is often cited in the foreign press. It’s common to hear diplomats and foreign journalists in Beijing railing against it. It seems to provoke head-shaking from people from all around the world.

To see its editorials, you can understand where they’re coming from. The two editorials it prints each day are just about the only content it produces on its own; all the other pieces typically quote the foreign press. But the rhetoric is often outlandish. Recently, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was referred to disparagingly as a “provincial governor,” suggesting she was in charge of an administrative unit within China. Australia’s “fickle” approach to foreign affairs was described as “small person diplomacy.”

The newspaper also contributed in a big way to souring Chinese feelings toward South Korea. South Korean THAAD proponents were met with emotionally charged criticisms, asking if they had “grown stupid from eating only kimchi.” When the South Korean Coast Guard warned that it would start firing live rounds at Chinese fishing boats that illegally entered South Korean territorial waters in the West Sea, it asked whether South Korea had “gone mad.” The editorials, which every day refer to foreign governments, political parties, and forces as nimen - “you people” - are undignified, at least by our standards. For the most part, they adopt a nationalist, patriotic perspective that sees any loss to China as absolutely bad and any benefit to China as absolutely good.

The problem comes when we start referring to it as a “government-run news outlet.” At first glance, this seems justified, since the Global Times is a sister publication to the People’s Daily, which is an official newspapers of the Chinese Communist Party. It also prints articles written by People’s Daily reporters at home and abroad. Aside from the Global Times Online section, all Global Times employees work at the “People’s Daily Town” in Beijing’s Jintai Lu neighborhood.

Still, it’s difficult to call the Global Times exactly a “government-run news outlet.” While that term gives the impression that it communicates the position of government authorities, officials in China insist that the Global Times is not that kind of newspaper. While we have no way of knowing their actual thoughts, a Chinese diplomat said that officials have “often been dismayed” by its content.

The newspaper is also not included in the list of the 18 “major central media” often mentioned in the Chinese press world. According to one document, that list is divided into news outlets at the “ministerial level” (People’s Daily and Xinhua), the “vice-ministerial level” (Qiushi, People’s Liberation Army Daily, Guangming Daily, Economic Daily, China Daily, China National Radio, China Central Television, China Radio International, and Science and Technology Daily), and the “bureau director level” (Discipline Inspection Daily, Workers’ Daily, China Youth Daily, China Women’s Daily, Farmers’ Daily, Legal Daily, and the China News Service). As a newspaper outside this list, the Global Times itself says its corresponds to a “marketing medium,” as opposed to a government-run medium.

A newspaper that bases its positions on public opinion

The correct way to view the Global Times is as a newspaper that does not so much represent the position of authorities as it seeks out positions based in public opinion that more readers will support. Since China is a society where the press is controlled, that does not leave it with a lot of room to maneuver; anything “anti-government” or “anti-system” would be strictly cracked down on. Some scholars claim it has something of an effect in terms of “finding the boundary of what is reportable.” And since the Global Times is the only medium doing that, some even regard this as “special treatment.”

What’s worrying is that with South Korean news outlets so often quoting the Global Times, the official position of Chinese authorities gets distorted when it is described as a “government-run news outlet.” Distortions give rise to misunderstandings, which give rise in turn to errors. It’s something that also needs to be taken into account because the Global Times is effectively the only outlet in China providing articles worth referencing aside from the reports in the actual government-run media, which are always identical to what officials announce. It’s a system that stands to create some “Global Times-centered” mistakes.

Kim Oi-hyun, Beijing correspondent

Imagine if there were a newspaper like the Global Times in South Korea. Could a newspaper succeed with an approach of blind support and promotion for the government’s foreign affairs and national security policies, filling most of its 16 pages with translations of “patriotic” foreign press pieces about how awesome South Korea is? All I can say is that I would be unlikely to associate with those reporters.

By Kim Oi-hyun, Beijing correspondent

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