Corruption watch: The red flags of China’s red flag

Source: Corruption watch: The red flags of China’s red flag – The Standard

BY TAWANDA MAJONI

There was this time when you got the sense that the Chinese embassy was changing its tack for the right direction.

That was the time when the red-flag administration, through its embassy here, came out barking at its own investors who were flouting local laws and so on.

That was also the time when Chinese business chambers here spoke the same language as the embassy, on the need for good business ethics.

We were actually told through one nascent online media outlet that the Chinese embassy had caused the expulsion of Freestone quarry mine in Mutare for disregarding the law.

Of course, that’s one thing you were always going to take with a bucket of salt, but the sign was encouraging. At least, it was an admission on the part of the embassy that there are Chinese investors, who are not doing things right.

I was personally, in a way, heartened when the Chinese business community recently invited me to a talk show on the state and future of Chinese investments in Zimbabwe.

I found the gesture encouraging considering the small wars we have had in the past for my talking critically about Chinese investments.

Come to think about it, they even gave me an award for writing a critical analysis on how the Zimbabwean elite was colluding with China and Chinese investors to eat from our national trough.

The award took me aback, though.

While they justified the award on the basis that my article in this particular column was well-researched and objective, I was blinking all the way.

I accepted the award on principle, and, as a footnote, urged that Chinese investors must just do the right thing and not expect any PR from me or so.

Not that I was going to be too naïve about the Chinese gestures. I still had my own reservations, but the point is, by reaching out like that, there was some readiness, especially on the part of the embassy, to make some admissions, subtly though.

I’m hoping that China will be seriously considering doing bona fide soul-searching, for a bona fide solution to their soiled image in the investment sector.

But that seems like hoping against hope if you look at how the embassy conducted itself this past week. After several investigative stories commissioned by my organisation—Information for Development Trust (IDT) — that were run by The Standard, The Independent, NewsHawks and a couple of regional centres, the gun barrels were smoking again.

The Chinese embassy took to Twitter to fume. It made numerous allegations that, at the least, were crassly vulgar and tactless.

Of course, they are doing that with the help—quite ironically—of locally hired guns who some of us know very well. These pawns are getting good money for doing the hatchet job.

That’s a bit of an irony because, last week as in the past, the embassy was moaning about how Washington was paying journalists—IDT included—to smear Chinese investments so as to subvert the Zimbabwean government, deprive Zimbabwe of access to foreign investment and the world’s “biggest market” and “sow hatred between China and the Zimbabwean people”.

It remains unclear how China is the biggest market for Zimbabwe, though.

The embassy made an intriguing reference to the work it has done in Kenya.

It said, while the Kenyans were celebrating a world class expressway built by the Chinese, people like me, my organisation and other civil society organisations were busy undermining the “good” work that China was doing in Zimbabwe and, in the process brutally and cruelly fighting against Zimbabwean development.

The embassy called us “clowns” in a renewed “puppet show”. It said we were selling our souls to Washington “for a corn chip”, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Typically, the Chinese anger was reinforced by the government-controlled media. In one of the papers, they actually did a front page story that claimed that IDT was working with the US embassy and the CCC party to foment chaos ahead of a May 26 uprising by Zimbabwean protestors.

The story accused IDT of working with journalists to write falsehoods so as to undermine Chinese investments, create “national indignation”, paint Zimbabwe as an unsafe investment destination and trash the Look East policy.

It also claimed that journalists were working with NGOs to do the protest logistics for CCC. Phew! You don’t face such a compendium of accusations and still keep your nuts.

But then, just about everything is wrong with the manner in which the official media and the Chinese embassy talked about our work.

The front page story that appeared in one of the local official dailies was a very naughty job, for starters. It threw out the window, all the ethics.

The headline was crude. It condemned us, other NGOs and journalists as agents of civil unrest who were working with the opposition.

For me, it was actually the first time I was hearing that there would be “yellow protests” on May 26.

The last time I talked to Nelson Chamisa was way back in 2013, ahead of the elections. And it was a media interview. Nothing more, nothing less.

So you see the cheek in the dude, who wrote the article?

He was frothing about us peddling falsehoods.

And he was doing it by being the one peddling falsehoods.

To cap it all, this vague author of the story never bothered to give us the right of reply as is required. That means his story was always going to be unbalanced and inaccurate.

It’s not the first time that this particular Pravda has shown gross disregard for ethics where my organisation, me, citizens and other institutions are concerned. Last year, another vague and renminbi-hunting writer claimed we were proxies of the USA.

And not even a single muscle was stretched to get our voices into the story.

Of course, this Pravda and its sisters, brothers or illegitimate cousins are well-documented for violating media ethics, but they don’t become right on the basis of repetition and impunity.

One day is one day. These unprofessional writers and their publications will have to answer for their commissions.

The main reason why people like me are not litigating is that we still want to give freedom of expression a chance, and litigation is not the best way to promote this freedom.

The Chinese embassy, the official media, the Zimbabwean government and all the other naughty elements must be disabused of one thing. It’s not like if you receive funding for your project from the US embassy, you automatically become a proxy of Washington, no.

IDT started operating a long while ago. It has its own objectives that are independent of any outside player. It plays by its own book.

When a funder comes on board, that funder is just helping us meet the objectives we agreed on, on our own. And we agreed on those way before the US embassy or any other donor came on board. So, it becomes crudely fallacious to say we are dancing to the tune of any funder.

Come to think about. How many billions of American dollars has the Zimbabwean government received from Washington since independence, up to just yesterday? Does that make the Zimbabwean government a proxy of Washington? Against who and what?

You want to come to terms with the truth that Beijing is actually funding Zimbabweans to do its PR. When you see these Zimbabweans writing that rancid stuff against journalists and civil society, where do you think they are getting their motivation? What’s good for the goose must also be good for the gander.

If Beijing is sour, as it says, that Chinese investments are being exposed for their intransigencies by some journalists and then comes up with this naïve and predictable conspiracy theory that this is happening because the journalists are being sponsored by Washington, it must also quickly admit that it guilty of the same sin because it’s also sponsoring journalists.

The difference between the two groups of journalists is that the independent ones are writing the truth, and the other pool is busy doing propaganda based on tall, rickety and defamatory lies. If you notice, the Chinese embassy and its gutter journalists have never bothered to point out the alleged lies in the stories written by the team of journalists we are working with. Why not? Because they know it’s the truth. Rather, they go foaming on imagined conspiracies.

Then there is thing about hypocrisy. Let’s work with a simple argument here. If you applaud an act for its merits, then you are acknowledging that the act is good for you. X has applauded an act Y for its merits. Therefore, X has acknowledged that the act Y is good for X.

It would, therefore, be contradictory and hypocritical to applaud an act for its merits but then go ahead and say the act is bad.

Let’s go to the Chinese embassy. If you give an award on merit, then you are acknowledging that the award is well-deserved by the recipient through his or her own act or acts. China gave me an award.

That means they were acknowledging that my act of writing the article that was critical of Chinese investments and the Zimbabwean elite was good on the basis of its merits.

Not only that. The Chinese embassy gave another award to one of the journalists we are working with.

His story exposed environmental law violations by Sunny Yi Feng, a Chinese company. True, this story was written with support from a grant given by the US embassy, and that was clearly acknowledged at the end of the story.

It has never been a secret.

The US is not the only government that is giving grants for investigative reporting. A whole host of other governments, foundations and independent agencies are doing that in Zimbabwe and beyond. And the US is giving grants for humanitarian and other projects too.

By the way, critical reporting on Chinese investments and relations was not invented by IDT. It well-predates us.

The Chinese embassy was well aware that the story was written with a grant from the US and went ahead and gave an award to our journalist for his work.

Why is the red flag changing direction now? Who shifts turns like that without getting involved in a messy contradiction?

You can’t say, hey your story is good even if it was funded by the Americans, then turn around and say, hey your stories are bad because they are funded with American money.

When all is said and done, the point is that China must remove itself from its self-serving arrogance and paranoia.

And the official media must play a neutral, balanced, objective role of feeding the public domain.

Without that, the long, negative lenses will always be out.

• Tawanda Majoni is the national coordinator at Information for Development Trust (IDT)—a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and can be contacted on majonitt@gmail.com