Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
I do - mostly because I read the interview with the reporter somewhere in a blog or news story this morning. (Can't remember where.) Sounded shocked, and probably wondering about job security issues.
|
I'm sure he was shocked, but I really don't think that, as the C Party's official news organ, the explanation makes any sense at all. If I were a PD reporter who had been fed a story by officialdom (the only sort the PD prints), which I duly published, and then had the powers that be denounce it and assert I had mistranslated something, I'd sure as hell freak about my job security as the duly designated official fall guy - and vehemently back whatever the official story was.
Retracted official pronouncements are pretty standard in the official Chinese media; they are rarely true mistakes. More usually, the party is sending out a trial balloon, someone in officialdom is trying to use the media to pull some corrupt boodoggle or other, or some party faction is trying to outpolitic some other party faction by forcing some situation to a head through public disclosure/misinformation.
My personal guess is that the CP, seeing protectionism on the rise in the west and realizing that they are going to reneg on their WTO full-membership obligations when they come due in late '06, wanted to test what the effects might be if they wanted to use the repegging option to buy themselves some breathing room in other areas of the economy, though they had no intention of actually doing so, certainly not just now.
But I'm cynical and don't really believe in simple mistakes in international politics (though I believe heartily in complex or systemic miscalculations; see: fall of USSR, WMD).
