'Spontaneous' answers keep press conference more lively

Overheard snippet of conversation: "Someone just asked Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan what signal is sent by the frequent visits to the old revolutionary bases by the country's senior leaders ... and everybody laughed."

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The speaker was a journalist whispering into his mobile phone - maybe dictating to his online editor? - at a press conference held by the Chongqing delegation of the National People's Congress on Friday.

Nearly 100 reporters hurled all sorts of questions at Huang, also a national legislator, at an over-packed hall in Beijing Capital Xindadu Hotel.

Some questioned if it was tenable for the Southwest China municipality to run a television channel broadcasting red culture for long without advertisements; others challenged how the city, a pilot for residential housing reform, could implement a property tax and a public rental building project.

For journalists from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and news agency Bloomberg who eagerly raised their hands for still more questions, a soft-spoken Huang, with his hands raised, said gently: "Don't worry, I have enough time."

It was one of the most spontaneous and exciting press meetings by a delegation I've seen during my coverage of the annual parliamentary session in the past eight years.

"Spontaneous" because Huang was strikingly no-nonsense and never read answers from prepared documents. "Exciting" because 40 minutes toward the end of the extended two-hour meeting, reporters were actually rushing to catch hold of the microphone and shouting to get their voices heard.

Later in the day, I found that a micro-blogger for people.com.cn had broadcast the press conference live, and an editorial hailed the reporters' seemingly noisy but tenacious actions at the meeting as a move to assume their responsibility.

It is safe to say that the landscape of China's media world has been reshaped by increasing levels of journalistic professionalism and transformed by the Internet over the past few years.

To appreciate this, one need only look at how Chinese reporters are competing with their foreign peers to pursue news during the annual gatherings of the country's top legislature and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), known in Chinese as the "Two Sessions".

At noon on Saturday, for instance, a reporter spotted Mao Xinyu, grandson of late Chinese chairman Mao Zedong, coming out of the meeting hall. Immediately a swarm of reporters thronged to ask him questions.

The CPPCC member was kept in front of the elevator on the second floor of the Great Hall of the People for a good several minutes before he was able to leave.

The political adviser told reporters that he would propose creating a training school for cadres in Shaoshan, the birthplace of Mao Zedong, in Central China's Hunan province.

Apart from reporters, interviewees are increasingly Internet literate and media savvy. Some of the lawmakers and political advisers are adept of expressing themselves in cyberspace; others know the tricks to deflect questions.

A few years ago, stereotypical Chinese reporters - at least how movies and TV series portrayed them - would ask a question like: "What is your feeling when you ..."

Today if you asked Li Yizhong how he felt on becoming a CPPCC member, the former minister of industry and information technology would snap, as he did on Friday: "No particular feeling, and no information for questions irrelevant to the two sessions!"

There is no such thing as a stupid question, but there is such a thing as stupid reporting, and that is the very thing that doesn't sell newspapers.

(China Daily 03/07/2011 page8)