The New York Times Goes to China

The daily U.S. newspaper launched an edition in the language of Confucius; however, the initiative embarrasses Beijing.

Enough is enough. “In 2011, 811 Chinese journalists were allowed to enter the U.S., whereas only two from the U.S. were allowed to enter China. The imbalance between the presence of Chinese media on American soil and our presence in China is amazing!”* For Dana Rohrabacher, U.S. Congressman and founder of a bill on Chinese media reciprocity, it was the final straw in February, when the Chinese channel CCTV opened its branch in the United States: three floors in the heart of Washington, advanced studios and a team, two thirds of which is debauched among the main U.S. and international media – CNN, NBC, Fox News, BBC, AP and Al Jazeera. Uncle Sam responded on June 28, with the web launch of the Chinese language version of The New York Times: cn.nytimes.com. It’s one way for the renowned American newspaper to have a go at crossing the “Great Wall” of information implemented by Beijing to censor the Internet. The new site, completely free (for now), will publish around 30 articles a day for the “educated, wealthy and globalized Chinese.”

With the first issue including an article on the explosion of a production factory for iPad tablets in Chengdu and another on forced abortion, would they have already offended Beijing? The fact remains that despite being an instant success, two main microblogs that relay American newspaper articles were immediately blocked. Censorship? A simple technical problem? At NYT, there is caution. “We are not operating like a Chinese media company,” said Joseph Kahn, the foreign editor. “We hope and expect that Chinese officials will welcome what we’re doing.”

To bypass Chinese law, which prohibits foreign media from broadcasting news directly in China, NYT uses servers outside the country. A well-known tactic of its colleagues at the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, which has the disadvantage of being easily located and therefore vulnerable to censorship. In 2010, The Wall Street Journal site was jammed for five weeks surrounding the Nobel Prize awarded to dissident Liu Xiaobo, causing the site to lose half of its traffic. Meanwhile, even though the site seems accessible so far, microblogs always have repeated “technical difficulties” and Sina Weibo, the Chinese Twitter, still shows the same laconic message: “This page does not exist.”

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.