Peter Arnett's reporting from China

SHANTOU, China, (AFP) - When Pulitzer prize winner Peter Arnett was reporting from the frontline of the Vietnam war, the last thing he had to worry about was censorship, but that's not the case for the Chinese journalism students who are hanging on his every word.
As the students at southern China's Shantou University listen to Arnett talk about his experiences as a war correspondent, it is easy to forget that their greatest concern as professional journalists will be ensuring they do not run foul of the communist party that governs their country.

But while the Chinese government appears to be tightening its already formidable control over all forms of information, Arnett says he has found none of the expected limitations on what he can say in his classes during a four-month stint as visiting lecturer at the university's Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication. "I thought there would be real limitations in what we would be able to talk about but that is not the case," he told AFP in a recent interview.

"In other places I have been I have encountered a sense of pessimism but I don't get that sense here. I'm privileged to be giving young people some of my insights." For Arnett, who won America's highest journalistic prize in 1966 for reports from Vietnam for the Associated Press, teaching journalism in a country known as much for its human rights abuses as it is as host of the 2008 Olympics is simply another assignment in a long career.

"It appeals to my journalistic instincts. It's a journey of discovery, the challenge of teaching a brand of journalism in an alien environment," said Arnett, 72, who still works as a reporter and was most recently on assignment in Baghdad, until October, freelancing for several Asian and US publications.

The situation in the classroom appears to be very different from that faced by working Chinese journalists, all of whom are employed by organs ultimately controlled by the state. The Chinese government has made some effort to ease the Draconian restrictions it places on the movements of foreign correspondents in the lead up to and during next year's Beijing Olympics.

But global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in its 2007 annual report that Chinese authorities are getting even stricter with the domestic media. "Faced with burgeoning social unrest and journalists who are becoming much less compliant, the authorities, directed by President Hu Jintao, have been bringing the media to heel in the name of a 'harmonious society'," the report said, referring to the latest guiding philosophy adopted by the Chinese government.

"The press is being forced into self-censorship, the Internet is filtered and foreign media very closely watched," it said. Arnett's students -- described on the school's website in a statement by the dean, Ying Chan, as "the communication agents of the upcoming historical events and eyewitnesses of the new world" -- show a refreshing lack of cynicism and ask penetrating questions.

-- Self-censorship aims to ensure all news is good news -- But they are not naive and some have already encountered the reality of working for a state that prefers all its news to be good.
Eliot Gao, 24, a postgraduate student in Arnett's class who aspires to work in international journalism, cut his teeth doing investigative reporting.

In one of his earliest projects he investigated the link between cancer deaths in the town of Guiyu, in southern Guangdong province, and a local water supply that had been poisoned by electronic waste. "We went to the (local) government but they told us to go away when we asked about the cancer deaths," he said.

"So we went to hospitals and primary schools to ask questions. There was an eight-year-old boy diagnosed with cancer who died last year. We spent hours finding the house (but) the boy's mother said she didn't want to be interviewed. She was suspicious."Eventually he persuaded her to talk, he said, but he was told that his findings would not make it into print. The students know they will not enjoy the same freedoms as their counterparts in the West, but they and their teachers say they are optimistic about the future, no matter how slow change is in coming.

"The media in China is about 50 or 60 years behind the United States or Europe," said Pang Yanjie, 24, also a postgraduate student, adding that people can be reluctant to talk to journalists because they fear reprisals. Peter Herford, a professor of journalism who previously taught at Colombia University in New York, said the students are taught the principles of journalism as they would be elsewhere but he is aware they will not be able to practise their craft unfettered.

It will be a long time before the students at Shantou can put everything they learn into practice, he says, adding: "But some of us are convinced it's going to get there."He said one challenge was to get the students thinking critically because "most Chinese are never taught to do that". Chinese journalists, numbering about 700,000 nationwide, are registered by the government and must sit annual tests to ensure they remain on-message, he said.

While the information ministry decrees what subjects are off-limits for journalists, "nobody writes the laws down," Herford said, so it is up to the individuals to set their own limits. The result: most censorship in China is self-censorship."The tests given to journalists test their knowledge of journalistic regulations and duties. From the perspective of the government they would call this competence. From our perspective we would see it differently," Herford said.

The Internet and the rise of bloggers, which he estimates at more than 20 million, provide the best chance of breaking up the prevailing system, Herford said, by allowing people to speak more freely than they can through traditional media channels. But perhaps the most important sign of all is that although the students at Shantou may not always get the answers they want, they are at least brave enough to ask the questions.