Some Reflections on Bob Woodruffs China White Wash

Author：佚名 Source：none Hits：119 UpdateTime：2008-10-19 1:29:43


"So near to the truth, yet so far." Thats the feeling I came away with after watching Bob Woodruffs recent China Inside Out documentary for ABC news. Its regrettable that a journalist of such a high caliber as Woodruff can get so close to a story and not really see it -- while helping to perpetuate a number of dangerous myths about China.

Woodruffs approach seemed very promising at first. He went to four different continents and countries in order to assess the global impacts of China, the countries being Angola, Brazil, Cambodia, and the United States.

The Angolan segment highlighted Chinas economic development model in Africa. The myth perpetrated in this segment is that the development has actually provided a net benefit to the people of Africa.

In fact, the real truth China is practicing a very sophisticated 21st century version of imperialism in which China loans African countries billions of dollars in exchange for encumbering natural resources. These resources range from oil and natural gas to copper, cobalt, and titanium. As part of its debt encumbrance strategy, China gets to reduce its unemployment rate by using a large Chinese construction workforce to actually do the work rather than relying so much on the native population.

In this segment, Woodruff makes repeated references to corruption. However, in a glaring omission, he fails to make explicit just how much of the billions in Chinese aid is actually siphoned off into offshore bank accounts held by the African elites. Nor does Woodruff highlight the intense poverty in the countriesChina is supposed to be "benefiting" -- other than offering a few images of slums.

That said, the absolute worst omission of the African segment is Woodruffs failure to mention the Darfur genocide in the Sudan. Instead, the only thing we get is a passing reference to Chinese aid to the Sudan in exchange for oil. In fact,China regularly trades its veto power at the UN for African resources in exchange for shielding African despots from UN interventions.

What made Woodruffs omission all the more galling is that Woodruff did an extensive interview with Chinas United Nations Ambassador Wang Guangya. This is the same reprehensible "diplomat" who has repeatedly blocked UN action on Darfur. (Wang also has blocked action following the sham Zimbabwe election and the attempts of the West to sanction Iran for its nuclear development). The failure to confront Wang on the Darfur question was tantamount to appeasement -- or, far worse, simple ignorance.

Woodruffs omissions were equally in evidence in his Brazil segment. The theme Woodruff drew here is that Chinas increasing consumption for soybeans is leading to deforestation of the Amazon and potential environmental problems. The biggest problems with this segment were a lack of visual imagery to portray the destruction of the Amazon, and the lack of science and statistics to explain how deforestation in the Amazon is likely to affect the global environment and crop production.