Editor’s Note: ‘Exit Interviews’ is a new, semi-regular series in which we debrief prominent figures as they take their leave of China.
For six years since 2007, John Garnaut was Fairfax Media’s China correspondent, writing for publications such as The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and Foreign Policy (FP). The son of Australia’s ambassador to China (1985–88), ANU Professor of Economics Ross Garnault, John spent several years growing up in Beijing before graduated as a law student from Monash University and returning to China nearly 20 years later.
Having left China as one of the country’s most respected reporters (see ‘Six Years That Shook the World’ on the FP site), we caught up with John to ask his impressions of China.
On growing up in China…
The smell of cooking oil and coal stoves… The biggest cultural shock was being in an American school culture, actually.
I do have a rather vivid memory of a family holiday in Xinjiang, 1986, in Turpan, with my schoolmate, Vallejo Gantner. I remember this crazy grey-rock desert, hot as hell and 55 degrees on the day we arrived. Out of nowhere, there were these mini oases, fed by underground aqueducts fed from the snowmelt on the Tianshan, I think. You could walk down the stone steps and drink this amazing cold, pristine water, like it probably had been for thousands of years.
For some reason I was climbing a tree when I realized some bastard had stolen my camera. I jumped down, chased this guy as far as I could, and spent the three-day train ride back to Beijing with a massive temperature and heat exhaustion, furious at my mum for wrapping me in ice-cold sheets for the whole journey. Despite all that, I really loved Xinjiang, and still do.
On growing up an ‘embassy brat’...
(My friends were) fellow diplomat brats, mostly… playing cricket on the ice together and catching miniscule fish in the creeks around the Great Wall. In those days there wasn’t much mixing with Chinese families, except for those of embassy staff, including the kids of the embassy driver, Lao Guo, and cooks Xiao Lu and Xiao Geng. I was pretty small, 12 and 13, and not much interested in the various dignitaries… Although Dad does like to remind me that when Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze came over for tea, I hid myself behind his chair, hoping to hear news of my hero at the time, Mikhail Gorbachev. Dad kicked me out before they got to the good stuff.
On returning to China...
People were still listening to Cui Jian, which was very cool, and it was still an incredibly hierarchical society, which I wish it wasn’t.
On whether his family background gives his ‘an unfair advantage’...
Was there an ambassadorial Rolodex waiting for me? Well, no. But I think it helped a great deal in one important respect. My old man had a deep, genuine interest in economic development and in racial equality; and deep, genuine friendships with a bunch of terrific and intelligent scholars and officials. He had these long, perhaps extraordinary, conversations with courageous and open-minded leaders like Hu Yaobang, Hu Quli, Li Ruihuan and Zhao Ziyang (who my old man rates as having the biggest brain he’s ever encountered). I knew, therefore, that these types of people must be in the system, somewhere, even if they were keeping a lower profile and not running the country like they were in the Eighties. Once or twice, it helped to keep a conversation going, if I was lucky enough to encounter one of their children… without the family connection, it would have taken a lot more time to learn their trust and find a way to connect.
On the credibility of anonymous sources...
I hear this question a fair bit, usually from people who have not reported on elite Chinese politics, and it makes me want to ask: how do you know that’s how it is? I know it certainly was like that, as there are still China Experts today who will tell you that Hua Guofeng was purged because he was a ‘Whatever-ist,’ that Deng Xiaoping was the sole and original architect of China’s economic reforms, that Lin Biao was planning a coup against Chairman Mao, that there was a two-line struggle, that the Yuanhua smuggling case was about smuggling, that there are no elite factions today, and that leaders don’t beat each other up at Beidahe anymore. Actually, I think that particular problem – of being sold rubbish - applies more readily to non-resident foreign scholars, investment bankers and officials than resident journalists – mainly because they are more likely to be chaperoned by official handlers and deceived by propaganda and otherwise be not fully aware of what they’re dealing with.
That said, it is a very fair question. Readers typically have no way of assessing the credibility of anonymously sourced material.
I can’t speak for the methods of other reporters. In this line of reporting, I guess we tend to keep our sources to ourselves. I’ve rarely had anyone come out of the woodwork and say, “Hey, I’ve got a story for you”. In fact that hasn’t happened much, anywhere, in my reporting experience. I guess I’m just unlucky. But I can say that sifting bullshit is our stock-in-trade, and some do it better than others.
When I’m a reader I know I attach a discount factor to anonymous sources. If it is Xinhua reporting on happiness in Tibet, for example, or the New York Times quoting anonymous American intelligence sources on the Iraq War, I attach a discount factor of about 150 per cent. If it’s (New York Times Beijing correspondents) Chris Buckley on Chinese politics or Jonathan Ansfield, then I trust, from watching their work for a long time, their capacity to be (a) dead honest and (b) rigorous and (c) show reasonable judgment in assessing the material they run. There are others whose work I don’t place such weight upon. It’s very journalist-specific, and I accept that non-specialists can hardly be expected to run a spreadsheet on the record of each journalist they read.
So let me explain how I approach the problem.
I’m well aware that readers will also attach a discount factor to anonymous sources. To counter that, I try to prove myself to be as credible as possible, over a long period of time, so that I earn the trust of readers. I’ll never totally succeed but I can improve my credibility by (a) not being wrong and (b) using enough on-record sources from time to time to show that I am speaking with the kinds of people who might have insight into such questions. If you reckon I’ve got something wrong – please tell me!
To try and explain what is an opaque process: Almost all news and insights I’ve gleaned from anonymous sources have been in the context of long relationships, which I have initiated, on topics that I have usually prompted. Some of these people I’ve badgered for years until they’ve let me through the door. Sometimes I’ll ask about X, hoping they’ll inadvertently say something about Y.
There might be 10 things you learn in a conversation, nine of which you keep in the notebook and which may never see the light of day, but one of which may have been a throwaway line of great interest, which I’d take to other sources to confirm: “What did X say at Y meeting” etc. I think I probably got better at this over time. I’ve made my share of mistakes, including some embarrassing ones, to be sure. But if I’ve been spun a great load of crud and put it in the paper, then I’m not aware of it.
Several of these stories that I’ve reported I’ve sat on for years. I never take the attitude that I’m in a hurry to report anything, at all. But some things that were sensitive are not quite so after the passage of time, in which case I might go back to the source and ask them if they’d be prepared to go public.
That said, I do understand there being skepticism at anonymous sources, and that’s a healthy thing. I do, however, endeavor to put real names behind the vast majority of my stories, including senior sources, especially where they are making allegation against others (some examples here and here). I’d like to think that this is a distinguishing feature of my work.
On having a special bond with China...
There’s nothing particularly Chinese about me, I don’t think, but I do feel a huge amount of empathy and solidarity for the society and some wonderful individuals in it. I think particularly of some lawyers, journalists and historians, and a whole bunch of wonderful, ordinary people battling for a little more dignity, who I’ve come across in the countryside.
On Bo Xilai and ‘leftism’...
There has been more ‘leftist’ talk coming from the top this year than any previous time I’ve been in China, although that hasn’t necessarily manifested in policy.
The Bo trial is just very, very tricky.
If they are going to put on a show trial, in this age of porous courts and Weixin (WeChat), then it had better be better than the one they put on for his wife or they will create a martyr, sitting in jail, like Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda. The things Bo did that were obviously hideously wrong include presiding over a justice system that routinely extracted false confessions through torture, leading to several deaths, and romanticizing the worst elements of China’s modern history. But it’s not clear that he’s being tried for any of that.
Is he being tried for his wife murdering someone? That’s awkward. Or for taking China back to Mao’s mass line? Well, Xi Jinping himself seemed to endorse it all in Chongqing, back in 2010, and has taken to quoting Mao today.
Was Bo personally receiving zillions in illicit income? I’ve been convinced of many things about this case, but I haven’t seen anything that convinces me that he’s personally egregiously corrupt in that way. Bo controlled huge financial resources in totally inappropriate ways but that is how the system is designed. And I think he did it for power more than personal financial gain. If his family was involved in money laundering out of the country, it’s pretty difficult to prosecute if those channels involve, say, PLA intel or other officially-connected channels.
Second, how to handle a guy that has a record of not cooperating with authority? How do they cover the risk that he stands up in court and says, “Well, yes, I did give bribes to that guy, but not as much as I gave to you, you and you also … “
The trickiest thing about the Bo trial is that the ruling families haven’t tried one of their own since… since, when, Hu Shiying in 1985? There are so many of them who have told me things like, “I don’t like Bo and I really don’t like what he did in Chongqing but everyone deserves a fair trial and it’s wrong that he can’t get one.” There is an instinctive solidarity within the princeling club, even among those who don’t like each other. With some exceptions, they can’t bear to shoot one of their own. It’s one extended family.
My guess, however, is that Xi will bring Bo to trial because if he doesn’t he will lose all authority and credibility. I’m going to guess a September trial, before the plenum.
On the Xi Jingping era...
I’ll reserve judgment until I can assess the courage with which they tackle the obviously urgent and far-reaching economic reforms that are needed, starting from now. Allowing slower growth is a good start. If they hold their nerve, substantially normalize factor prices, deregulate a bunch of sectors, and leave the economy in far healthier shape by the 19th (Party) Congress, then that opens up a whole set of new possibilities, because it means many of the largest, most obese vested-interests will have lost much of their financial and administrative clout.
Many of the worst, most socially destructive parts of the system will atrophy, while households, consumers and individuals will be empowered. Even if the Party-state continues to insist on monopolizing political power, preventing accountability and ruling above the law, they will find it harder to do so, and that will be a good thing. The boundaries between state and society will, to some extent, have to be redrawn.
On China in 2023...
- China will win the Asian soccer champs.
- Steel production will be less than it will be this year.
- China will be a far more democratic place – or a great big terrifying mess!
- (Bearish economist) Michael Pettis will still be waiting for several years of three percent growth.
On his plans for the future...
I’m spending the rest of this year working on the (princelings) manuscript, before going back to Fairfax based in Melbourne. I won’t know what I’ll want to do, and they probably won’t know what they want me to do, until a little later in the year. Man, the global media industry is in such dire straits…
The book: I’m trying to get inside the skin of some of these (Red royalty) folk. Find out what it feels like to be born into one of the most convulsive moments in world history and then survive, to find you and your childhood mates are all running the system your parents founded. What options do they have, how are their world views shaped and constrained, what future possibilities can be implied by their histories, to what extent will change be forced upon them. If you believe that the status quo is highly unstable, and that change is going to come from within not revolution, then when it comes to the future of the planet, they’ll have a pretty big say.
// The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo (Penguin, 2013) by John Garnault is available as an eBook Special on Amazon.com. An edited version of this article appeared in the August issue of That’s Beijing.
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