When to Sheet invited me to take over a space that for years belonged to dear Tatiana Prazeres, I was reluctant. Tatiana is one of the biggest references in China analysis in Brazil, and her experience living in the country helped to qualify the sinology debate in the Brazilian press. But she left Beijing, and for different reasons, so did I. And that’s not a good sign.
For decades, China occupied an exotic space in our imagination. It was the place from which imported products came from, populous, with a culture as beautiful as it was indecipherable. Everyone knew that the country was developing and becoming more and more important, but a good part of them didn’t quite understand why. On more than one occasion, I heard from fellow journalists that stories about China only took off when accompanied by something “bizarre” that could increase the number of clicks.
That perception has changed. If the 2008 Olympics put Beijing back on the map of the great powers, Covid has put the country in the general spotlight. I realize this because I’ve seen the demand for work increase; I went to China to study betting that the country would become unavoidable in a few years, and with the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan, within months everyone wanted to hear what I had to say.
The interest, however, was not accompanied by a boom in journalists working in loco in China. Although sinology has experienced a spring in recent years, the world press has not managed to increase its numbers to the height necessary to cover one of the most important topics of this generation.
The causes are many, but invariably go through how closed China has become. Beyond impenetrable borders for health reasons —something that came to an end with the dismantling of the zero Covid policy—, it has never been more difficult to cover China as a professional journalist.
Obtaining a correspondent visa is a herculean task, which requires months of navigating through bureaucracy and costs that are too high for vehicles that stagger to close accounts. Once accredited, journalists find officials increasingly reluctant to speak to reporters and a system that has become more hostile to the press, perhaps motivated by a sense of backlash.
So Beijing, once bubbling with an active community of correspondents, is now on the wane. Vehicles decided that the risks and official harassment to which their professionals were submitted were not worth the effort. Teams were deployed to South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, covering China from a distance, with great damage to information.
Those that remain face other problems, as closed borders and frequent lockdowns have exhausted the mental health of many professionals, like myself, and alienated a new generation, who now shun China in favor of close neighbors.
At the most crucial moment in recent history, professionals who are truly dedicated to understanding, analyzing and translating China are no longer in the country. The relationship with sources, already very complicated in person, becomes almost impossible online with an ostensible digital surveillance system.
In this desert, the public in search of information about China has, paradoxically, fewer options for quality professional journalism. The vacuum makes room for propaganda serials, both positive and negative. You lose the dialogue, you lose the public debate. The problems arising from this certainly increase.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
