CNN China bureau chief: disagree without being disagreeable
- Source: Global Times
- [13:21 June 18 2009]
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By Zhu Shanshan
To contact the author, please email zhushanshan@globaltimes.com.cn
Over a year after the anti-CNN tsunami in China, Chinese people’s sentiments towards CNN are still not calm waters.
Jamie FlorCruz, CNN’s bureau chief in China, confronted a lot of sensitive and embarrassing questions when he was interviewed live online with the Chinese and English editions of Global Times. People questioned the journalist online about CNN’s reportage on the Lhasa riots on March 14 last year, and some netizens even said, “Don’t to be too CNN”.
Smiling and a little bit embarrassed, the 58-year-old bureau chief responded people have a right to say what they want, but he hoped both CNN and Chinese people could move forward and genuinely accept each other.
“We hope the netizens and Chinese friends will look the whole body of CNN’s coverage of China,” the veteran journalist said. Pointing out Premier Wen Jiabao’s choice of giving CNN an exclusive interview during his trip to the US last year, FlorCruz said,“I think it indicates that Premier Wen Jiabao considers CNN as a credible and trustworthy medium.”
And FlorCruz has helped CNN viewers understand more about China thanks to his 38 years in the country. Fluent in Mandarin and having an Asian face, FlorCruz has different experiences compared with many other foreign reporters in China.
However he first came to China in 1971 on what he thought would be a three-week trip. But during that time, he found out then Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos had put him and some of his fellow traveling companions on a blacklist, as they had actively protested against Marcos. As a result, FlorCruz was forced into exile and had no choice but to stay in China.
To make a new life for himself in the country, FlorCruz once worked in a state farm for nearly a year in Hunan Province, Mao Zedong’s hometown where FlorCruz became acquainted with many Chinese farmers.
“I still keep in touch with my friends in Hengyang (a city in Hunan Province), and I have very deep feelings to the farm where I worked 37 years ago. I think they still consider me as a friend no matter what I do,” he said.
After that he went to Peking University, one of the best in China, to study Chinese history for four years. His university life was the most “memorable” experience for him and it gave FlorCruz a better understanding about the country with its huge population and long history.
Having seen China when it was “closed off, relatively backward and still locked in class struggle”, as he describes it, FlorCruz always has that perspective whenever he reports on China and he constantly remembers what China looked like 38 years ago.
He described the changes that have taken place during the past 30 years as “day and night” and “China now is an emerging global power which has great influence.”
