Death watch with Jiang Zemin
Chinese leader feeds lambs, poses with journalists for photos
Somewhere in China’s security network sits a photo of President Jiang Zemin and me. I’ve never seen it, but now that Jiang has finally died, aged 96, I feel deep in the bones that I should be filing a story on it all. People might not know. This will have to do.
I was with Agence France-Presse in 1999 and Auckland was hosting the APEC leaders summit. Normally I covered the region alone, along with a fantastic group of stringers across the Pacific, but the summit saw AFP send a gang of journalists in. Each gang sub-pack was attached to people like Bill Clinton or Vladimir Putin. When leaders were at the summit, all AFP’s army worked together. We only split up when leaders wandered off around the country. As a result, each of us were allocated individual delegations, mostly on what amounted to a death watch. Dont file anything unless its out of the ordinary, were the instructions; dropping dead a useful benchmark.
Jiang, a sprightly 73 then, flew to Christchurch, with me in tow. It wasn’t quite A-list death watching, but I didn’t mind as I had long grown fond of the city, mostly due to its excellent hotels. Jiang was just up the road in one in the downtown area. I did not see much of my own one that bitterly cold September night. Free Tibet protests had flooded the area and had resulted in police in various constitutional outrages designed to frustrate the rights of protesters. I filed stories on the protests.
Next morning non-Chinese reporters had to gather on a roadside near the square to be picked up by a bus and driven to a location west of Christchurch. This was true death watch coverage time: nothing much was going to happen, and whatever did, had little interest to any audience outside China State Media.
And the Chinese State Media had already arrived in overwhelming numbers on their own buses. Every step and utterance made by Jiang that morning was closely monitored by them. Little bursts of applause would break-out. Spring lambs did the inevitably cute number; some one may, or may not, have told Jiang that after he finished feeding the lamb, it was going for a long ride in a truck to meet….
Moving on: we of the non-Chinese media included photographers there, but they were mostly on death watch (and cute lamb) as well. It was a slow morning.
Tea had been arranged and Jiang, I and the rest gathered by a large tent. Some one announced that Jiang had requested a photo with all the media covering him. It was like someone had hit China State Media with an over-powered cattle prod. It was then that I noticed a high percentage of the Chinese media were women, and apparently from TV. Urgent make-up repair work was underway and then, without me hearing any instructions, jostling started on the photo line up.
A Chinese journalist who was not with the state explained quietly that for some of the people arguing positions, their placement in this single photo, in relation to Jiang, could well be career defining. Too far away from Jiang, and you might be off to Tibet after all. Close in, and life was set for marked improvement.
Jiang was waiting for it all to settle when some one noticed we agency types, non state, were not in the photo at all. Some negotiation went on with China State Media, but no one was willing to squeeze up and let us in. An official came over and apologised, and someone told Jiang to go ahead without us. Word then came, Jiang wanted a photograph with us, alone, non-Chinese. There were five or six of us.
After the big photo was taken, with great ceremony and simmering drama, Jiang came over to us. We informally sort of made space and then the President of China stood between us. He kind of smiled at each of us, turned to the camera, and my presence somewhere on the Canterbury Plains was recorded for posterity and Chinese state security.
Jiang and I went our own ways. It has to be said, neither of us gave much thought to the other again. I only mention it now because I was officially charged, for a time, with watching for his unexpected demise. Well, its happened, and I hope AFP knows….
©Michael J Field