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Posted on 10/15/2003 5:05:41 AM PDT by Int
China bans coverage of blast-off
But fear that a mishap will turn its biggest propaganda event in years into a public-relations catastrophe seems to have prompted the Chinese Government to ban live coverage of the launch from the remote Gobi desert site.
That, inevitably, has become the story, in the non-official media at least.
Last week, sources at China's state television were telling local and international media they would broadcast the blast-off live on two channels. But yesterday the official People's Daily website said the station had scrapped the live broadcast, without giving reasons.
Last week's official announcement that the launch of Shenzhou V (Divine Vessel) was scheduled for some time between today and Friday seemed to give the green light to Chinese media coverage. Local newspapers have provided a daily diet rich in trivia and banality since.
But media sources said the central committee's propaganda department had just issued a list of 86 subjects that were newly off-limits - including the space launch and an important annual meeting of the central committee that ended yesterday.
So the brief information spring - which brought the memorable revelation last week from the official news agency Xinhua that the remote Gobi desert launch centre was an eco-friendly paradise where the street lamps were shaped like spaceships and "colourful bushes are dotted here and there" - has dried up.
Now we may never know why, as the Xinhua report cryptically revealed, "more than 60 oases have emerged in the desert since the centre was founded" in 1958.
Or why, given present sensitivities, Xinhua thought now was a good time to tell the world that "northeast of the launch base are the graves of more than 500 people who contributed to the country's space cause".
The possibility of launch failure has been taboo all along.
China's leaders are perhaps haunted by a live broadcast of the 1995 explosion of a Long March satellite launch rocket that killed six people on the ground.
The astronauts' space menu is a far more palatable subject, even though it includes Gong Bao fried chicken with beans – a traditional dish named inauspiciously after a Qing dynasty warlord who proclaimed himself president of China and died soon afterwards.
A Hong Kong newspaper said to have close links with the Government in Beijing identified 37-year-old Yang Liwei as frontrunner for China's first man in space and national-hero designate, although it is still unclear whether one astronaut or three will be sent up. Zhai Zhigang and Nie Haisheng are said to be second and third in the pecking order.
As is usual in China these days, internet chatrooms are the best source of freewheeling opinion on the launch.
"It's a face-saving project!" observed a correspondent on Sina.com, China's most popular web portal. "Why don't they spend the money on the development of western China?"
Another suggested the cosmonaut should "piss on Japan when you pass it". And another proposed the spacecraft should "lose a few atomic bombs" over Japan.
Anti-Japanese sentiment has been running high since the news that a group of Japanese businessmen last month hired hundreds of prostitutes for an orgy in the port city of Zhuhai, which coincided with the anniversary of Japan's 1937 invasion of northern China.
By Catherine Armitage, China correspondent
15oct03
China can only hope its first manned spacecraft, expected to orbit Earth for 23 hours after a probable launch this morning, is better at spin than its Government.
In the elite two-nation club of spacefaring nations, disaster comes with the territory.
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