You just have to know where to fish in the swirling sea of information

ANALYSIS / JOURNALISTIC FREEDOM

China's black market flow of ideas

You just have to know where to fish in the swirling sea of information

By PHILIP CUNNINGHAM

The news kiosk nearest to my Beijing residence is nestled under the staircase of a massive pedestrian bridge that spans a centuries-old thoroughfare now thoroughly jammed with buses and cars bearing down on the dust of what was once the heart of the old city in Marco Polo's time.

The sturdy span not only connects one side of the street to the other, but links two different administrative districts.

The bridge is the only reasonably safe and convenient way to cross the busy fenced road, an elevated bottleneck and chokepoint as it were, engorged with foot traffic morning to night.

The bridge, fed by four massive staircases rimmed with inclined ramps for pushing bicycles, is sturdy and wide enough on top to accommodate hundreds of pedestrians at once, inadvertently providing the kind of foot flow coveted by street merchants.

As opportunistic merchants stake out space along the railing, the path narrows, the crowd thickens and the bridge is transformed into a floating market, allowing wily salespeople to hawk their wares above the pedestrian-unfriendly roadway below.

The market is a black market, operating without permits or permission, but it brings goods to customers, including impulse items and cute knick-knacks you didn't know you wanted until you suddenly wanted them.

Every now and then there is a crackdown and the merchants are brusquely dispersed by police, but the movable market persists and for the most part it thrives, if only because enough profit is turned to make the risks tolerable.

Because trade is conducted on the sly, it's buyer beware; quality control and accountability are largely absent. Counterfeit products abound, some relatively risk-free _ such as the latest Harry Potter movie. Others are downright risky, such as unsanitary foodstuffs. Faulty merchandise is nearly impossible to refund.

Wedged in between the faux marble railings of the footbridge one beholds a movable tableau of unsanctioned commerce, offering everything from pirated books, including political tracts from Taiwan, Hong Kong and translated bestsellers from abroad, to the latest Hollywood DVDs and banned documentaries critical of communism. Everything from socks, bracelets, mobile phone cases, flowers, incense, road maps, toys, tropical fruit, pet rabbits, freshwater shrimp, to fresh fish flopping in buckets is offered in plain view but can be made to disappear in a moment's notice.

When police from one of the two jurisdictions arrive, it often suffices for the fleet-footed merchants to shift to the other side of the bridge, and when law enforcement eventually shows up on the other side, to shift back again. Only during the more serious crackdowns, say during a ritual sweep before a major party congress, are the police actions synchronised to effectively clear the span of all vendors.

There are particular times of day and times of year when the bridge is strikingly uncluttered and empty of merchants, but it doesn't stay empty for long.

A similar dynamic in the art of the possible is at work in Beijing's bustling world of journalism. The days when the iron rule of political loyalty and conformity was the single most important force shaping Chinese journalism are gone. The single, unified state narrative, as espoused by the People's Daily, is a thing of the distant past.

The old stalwarts, such as the People's Daily, faced with competition from a freewheeling commercial press, are rapidly becoming irrelevant fish-wrap. Like many bloated, state-run enterprises on the verge of bankruptcy, subsidies alone can't keep them current or competitive in the market.

They are steadily losing readership share to new, resourceful players. Chinese journalists navigate this brave, new journalistic landscape by pluck and instinct, as the old red lines bend and break, as old, draconian restrictions are replaced by a more inconsistent, laissez-faire environment.

Censorship is still strictly imposed on selected taboo topics _ Tiananmen or Tibet among them _ but increasingly the old restrictions are met with defiance, the perimeter of acceptable expression forever being poked, stretched and widened. A combination of creative subterfuge and sheer resilience on the part of Chinese journalists keeps the press doggedly alive.

China is a big place. Different things can be expressed more or less freely in different places, playing one side of the bridge off the other so to speak.

It is often the case that papers in south China can say things that papers in the north couldn't get away with, and vice versa. This drives a practice known as yidi baodao, or "reporting far from home".

Like the vendors on the footbridge who shift from one end to the other to escape the police, wily journalists write for newspapers in province A to criticise corrupt officials in province B. This explains why Southern Weekend, a weekly broadsheet published in the southern city of Guangzhou, is such a hit in a city as far north as Beijing.

Newsstands overflowing with printed matter are getting to be ubiquitous in the big city, but their offerings remain uneven. Today's kiosks peddle everything from tough investigative reporting on corporate malfeasance to deceptive advertorials, from tabloids offering breathless scandal to fashion rags. Risk-taking for the risque manages to get even scrupulously apolitical journalists into trouble with the law, as libel suits, another new twist to China's complicated media scene, add to the hidden costs of the news.

It's a guerrilla war of sorts, but it is not a war against the government per se, as is sometimes implicit in black-and-white foreign reports about the struggle for press freedom in China. Rather it's more an uneasy alliance of earnest reporters and conscientious officials working in tandem for themselves and their country.

Accurate news reporting is useful, indeed essential, to provide an adequate response to epidemics and environmental disasters, and it serves an equally essential role in providing checks on out-of-control corruption and social injustice in a country in the throes of dramatic and fundamental change.

Doing real journalism in China remains a thankless job for the most part _ low pay, high risk. Pursuing the truth conscientiously is not a career for the faint of heart. It has been in the past, and still is to some extent, a fast track to unemployment, prison or exile, in the intrepid tradition of Liu Binyan, Dai Qing, Li Datong and other spirited journalists who dared to speak truth to power.

But such lone courageous individuals are rare. Most reporting is couched in the realm of the possible, though not without integrity and not without risk.

China is awash in a swirling sea of information, more than at any time in its history, thanks to the Internet, mobile phones, handy-cams, blogs, satellite television and newspapers.

Increasingly in China. you can find what you are looking for if you know where to look, but you must first master the art of reading critically, often between the lines.