Reporting on China 40 years ago: restrictions, frustrations and reading between the lines

By Paul Raffaele
ABC correspondent Paul Raffaele (5th from the right) during Gough Whitlam's visit to China. 

In early October 1973 I flew to Hong Kong on my way to setting up the first ABC bureau in Peking -- the Chinese capital city now known as Beijing.
China was still embroiled in the Cultural Revolution, a violent countrywide rebellion inspired by the then-demigod Mao Tse-tung, where many thousands died and millions were imprisoned.
China had virtually closed itself off from the world for a decade. 

No tourists were allowed and only a handful of foreign journalists were permitted to be based in Peking, compared to more than 1,000 today.
I was excited to be the first Australian journalist ever to be based in Mao's China and at the same time nervous at the prospect of being cut off in Peking from the familiar outside world.
Today, China welcomes thousands of tourists and business people daily, but on that autumn day in 1973 only six of us had permits to enter China, the Middle Kingdom. 

The other five were diplomats.

The confusion of arrival creates bureaucratic panic
At Lowu station I walked past a British soldier cradling a sub-machine gun and began the 100-step journey across a covered bridge separating China from Hong Kong. 

I felt like a character in a John le Carré novel.
At the other end I could see a Chinese soldier gripping an AK-47 in front of a giant red and gold wall painting emblazoned with a revolutionary saying: "We have friends all over the world". 

I remember wondering if it was a welcome or a warning, or both.
The morning was hushed as I reached the end of the bridge. 

There were few people about.
It was Shenzhen, a quiet fishing village with just a few hundred inhabitants and a single two-storey building housing the immigration and customs departments.
Now, it is home to several million people, and a role model in China's astonishing expansion into a world-beating industrial powerhouse.
After a three-hour train ride through rural China followed by a flight, I arrived at Peking airport. 

No one was there to meet me.
My earlier cables to the foreign media section of the foreign ministry seemed to have been overlooked. 

I stood beneath a giant portrait of Mao while a caretaker arranged for a taxi to come and get me.
The taxi took me to the Hsin Chiao Hotel in the middle of the city, originally built to house Soviet advisers who had long gone. 

The reception desk was empty but the taxi driver roused the manager from his bed.
Bewildered and increasingly frantic, he explained that all visitors to China were tabulated, tagged and sorted into their respective slots with welcoming officials at the airport, taxis and hotels allotted to greet them on arrival.
Manifestly, that had not occurred in my case.
An hour's voluble telephone conversations and a succession of shadowy bureaucrats produced official recognition that I truly existed and so I was finally given a key to a room in the almost deserted hotel.
It gave me entrance to a small room which for the next eight months was to be both home and office for me and my wife, who arrived a few weeks later.

Official handler warns: 'The masses might stone you'
The following morning I presented myself to Ma Yuchen, who was to be both the delight and blight of my life for the next 18 months.
A brilliant, dedicated man, Ma was in charge of the section that handled the few resident foreign correspondents. 

There were no Americans and I was the only foreign broadcaster -- which meant no BBC.
Ma was all smiles that first day and on every day that my despatches were "positive" on the subject of the new China. 

But when I transgressed the official truth he instantly changed to a scolding headmaster bent on correcting the errors of his latest pupil.
I remember a conversation with Ma during the row that erupted when the ABC showed Antonioni's documentary film of life in China. 

The Chinese government hated it and put pressure on the ABC not to show it.
Soon after it was broadcast, I asked for permission to travel in the countryside.
Ma looked at me as much in sorrow as in anger and remarked: "Mr Raffaele, how can I give you permission for such a journey when I can't guarantee your safety from the masses? They know the Australian Broadcasting Commission has shown the Antonioni film against out express wishes. If they catch you, they might even go as far as to stone you."
Ma went on to become China's ambassador to Great Britain and then China's eminence grise in Hong Kong following the 1997 takeover. 

I enjoyed our verbal jousting immensely.

Whitlam's visit inspires well-rehearsed rapture
One of the most memorable events took place a few weeks after I set up the bureau in Peking.
To the strains of a Chinese military band playing Click Go The Shears, Gough Whitlam, the first Australian prime minister ever to visit China, emerged from his jet to a rapturous welcome by thousands of colourfully dressed Chinese.
Hordes of girls in traditional costumes screamed rehearsed phrases of greeting, competing with a score of bands and innumerable fluttering red and gold banners.
From the airport the parade of big black limousines passed down the broad Chang An avenue, past the Forbidden City, cheered on by the many thousands of Chinese shouting eternal greetings to their Australian friends.
Such was the expertise of the Chinese propaganda machine that our reports, unhindered by any of the usual technical and bureaucratic delays I would later experience, dwelt fulsomely on the great and eternal spirit of friendship between China and Australia.
Few of us would ever know that the same effusively choreographed welcome would be turned on the following week, with an appropriate musical accompaniment, for an African dictator whose amusements included feeding his enemies to his pet crocodiles.
On that first day of the visit, at the welcoming banquet in the Great Hall of the People, Whitlam and all of us were introduced to the charismatic premier Chou.
We later raised glasses of mao tai in a toast to Chairman Mao, who was one of the greatest monsters in history, directly responsible for the deaths of more than 40 million Chinese.
Then, we listened in amazed delight as the band of the People's Liberation Army band played a stentorian version of On The Road To Gundagai.

Paul Raffaele in Peking, 1973: He was forbidden from talking to Chinese people in the street and visiting local homes.

The correspondent's lot: deciphering official communications
For most of the time I spent as the ABC’s man in China there was more frustration than glamour.
Movement around the country and coverage of day-to-day events were heavily restricted.
We were not allowed to leave the confines of the Peking boundaries without official permission and that was very rarely ever given.
We were denied access to key sources of information such as the leadership, bureaucracy and local journalists. 

We were forbidden from talking to any Chinese in the street and visiting local homes.
But life had its pleasant and memorable moments. 

I often wandered through the Forbidden City, usually the only person in the huge complex and often the only person on the Great Wall when I went for a visit.
My wife and I often visited the tumbledown antique shops in the historical Liu-Lichang Lane, sometimes purchasing a rare scroll, more often admiring Ching dynasty bric-a-brac.
We tried to find out what was happening among the leadership, usually without success.
We read the People's Daily devotedly with its obscure references to historical events centuries ago which we knew to be hints of what was a titanic battle between premier Chou and Madame Mao for control of China after Mao died.
We attended the boring diplomatic functions where the more imaginative among us sprouted wild and improbable political rumours that were swiftly replaced by others.
We did the best we could, our stories necessarily based on educated guesswork and half-truths, compounded on Western political logic that was more often than not inappropriate.
My colleagues were top journalists, famed in their countries, such as John Burns of the Toronto Globe and Mail, Gerd Ruge of Die Welt, and the irrepressible Claire Hollingworth of the UK's Daily Telegraph.
Scoops at home were their bread and butter. 

Yet I don’t recall anyone ever filing a single scoop while I was based in Peking.
There were other chances for scoops.
I spent nine months convincing the North Korean ambassador to approve a visit to a country even more isolated than China.
When he agreed I became the first Australian journalist to enter North Korea, and I was also the only Western correspondent in the North Vietnamese capital when Saigon fell in 1975 and South Vietnam surrendered to the legions of Ho Chi Minh.
Though unforgettable, none were more memorable than that exhilarating week in Peking 40 years ago when the ABC bureau opened for business and Whitlam and his cohorts came to visit.