Women's International Reporters Exchange
Briefings From Beijing -13, 15, and 16
Briefings From Beijing - 13
We in the West, though we may gamble speculatively, tend not to work speculatively. What I mean is that when we take on a job, we expect to be paid the agreed amount for our labor and on time.
Not so in China. Payment this month was a whole week late at CRI, aggravating the perpetual anxiety foreign employees here feel about whether the company will keep its part of the bargain. We hear that the company's foreign-affairs office is frequently in dispute with the financial department, while the managers of the English Service make their own contributions to the mixed messages and contradictory statements one hears from officialdom here. Certainly, the units are ready enough to pass blame from one to the other when things go wrong, but that doesn't help us much.
Don't just take my word for it. I quote from a brave letter written by my Australian colleague, Paris, to management:
"In what has become a monthly ritual, we foreign staff were paid late, and once again, no one paid us the courtesy of explaining where OUR MONEY was...
"If there are continuing problems within the CRI fiefdoms, why must our pay be caught in the middle of it?
"Why does no one in the CRI ENGLISH SERVICE office bother to explain that we foreigners will NEVER get paid on time any more? When I began working here in June, we were paid on the 4th of every month. Later, that became the 8th, and now it seems it will be the 11th.
"Why is nothing ever communicated to us?..."
And so on.
Meanwhile, I am not allowed to go on vacation because, eight months into the job, I still have not signed a one-year contract. The problem is: I still have not received a contract to sign! Or rather, I have received several versions of a contract in a continual cycle of revisions downgrading the terms of my employment!
The probationary contract, which I did sign at the outset, stipulated the salary would adjust once a two-month probationary period was completed. But the main contract CRI came up with, in one of its two lengthy appendices, actually presented a lower sum! Well, I suppose that's adjustment of a kind!
Then another revision quietly removed two vacation days for Christmas and turned a once mandatory travel allowance into a conditional one based on employee "performance." Now, the latest I have heard is that the six-page main contract (not including appendixes) has been expanded to a 13-page one! I am told it's because of "new laws and regulations" that came into effect this year.
Well, of course, there is the hackneyed argument always recited by Chinese administrators in such cases, that we foreign employees are so much better off than the Chinese ones, who sometimes work for months before getting their first pay check!
Unionize! I hear you say. Good idea! My complaints are, after all, standard fare among foreign employees here. Well, Mao be praised, we do have a union, though there has never been a single meeting. And our shop steward? Our CRI-appointed department manager who, for the last several months, has been trying to downgrade my salary while continually adding to the workload and responsibilities on my plate.
Run that by me again? We don't get to elect our own representatives? No. "We at CRI will select your representatives for you to negotiate with themselves about how they will treat you!"
Meanwhile, the Chinese government touts how it wants to attract foreigners to work in China! Well they won't get many at that speed!
Briefings From Beijing - 15
I suppose it had to come to this. "Sign the contract, or we will cancel your visa." I'm sure this threat – or something like it – has been dished out to many foreigners in China. And it's a threat that carries extra potency as we wait for the Olympics to play out before closing the chapter on our adventures abroad.
And the reasons for resisting contract terms are many. In my case, the latest revision to the pernicious document shaved off vacation days, halved the permitted number of sick days in a given year, and revoked the promise of a round-trip air ticket home upon renewing for a second year. That, and the introduction of new clauses enchancing management power, such as permission to withhold salary payment up to a month or in the case of an employee flouting unspecified "rules and regulations."
Oh, but I must give credit where credit is due: management did proffer a freelance arrangement, provided I was willing to accept half the amount of money for the same amount of work!
This in the context of a work burden so intense that it began to shrink one of my eyes! Yes, in a condition known as ocular myasthenia gravis, my left eyelid has begun drooping, presenting to my horrified gaze in the mirror the spectacle of disfigurement. Unlike book readers in the West, I must not only record this translated Chinese literature (with the additional challenges of figuring out Chinese pronunciations in both the Pinyin and Wade-Giles systems, along with fixing errors), but then edit the recordings and build entire episodes around them.
The strain of continually staring alternately from book to computer screen has taken a terrible toll, but in response to the doctor's note to take two weeks' rest, management (OK, it's about time I named names – he is deputy director of CRI's English service, Mr. Li Peichun) scoffed out loud, suggested the doctor was irresponsible, and refused to enhance the very primitive recording facilities with a book stand or a computer-screen filter to ease the strain on my eyes.
Curious that he shares the same family name, Li, as my nemesis in Leshan of 2006/2007. I might be inclined to decry that entire clan – just as I have blessed the name of Xie, because three outstanding individuals of that house have shown me extraordinary kindness since I came to China – were it not for my admiration of Li Bai, China's great antiwar poet of the Tang Dynasty.
Anyway, this Mr. Li complained too, that I had not recorded enough episodes during the month in question -- episodes which, I might add, CRI has made no effort to broadcast, despite my Herculean efforts in producing almost 100 of them so far. Nor has CRI made them available by Internet either, despite my detailed designs and preparations for this, nor followed through on months-old commitments to seek rights permissions from the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. In fact, management told me in the beginning that the permissions had already been obtained, but later reversed the assertion.
Meanwhile, I have gone to great lengths to seek permissions from other book publishers in the series, including waiting up to call a publisher in New York on a 12-hour time difference, and tracking down the author of another book now out of print.
And all the while, CRI continues to use my voice for soundbites, narrations, and promos for their other radio shows and pet projects, without a penny of extra compensation.
In the end, the equation came down to this: sign the contract, serve out the three months of my first year left to run on it, and leave peacefully; or continue to fight it and run afoul of employer and government in one fell swoop. I sought the Lord on this question and felt a sense of peace in opting for peace. Another month's salary is secured, and I am saving what's left of my vacation time as insurance against any unwelcome task reassignments.
Briefings From Beijing - 16
In one sense, I'm glad the heat's off me. This time, it's the turn of my friend and colleague Paris, to run afoul of management.
He showed me the text message sent him by...guess-who, Mr. Li Peichun, on Monday, complaining that Paris' "lethargy at the end of the broadcast was intolerable" and informing him that he was immediately suspended from newscasting as a result.
Now I didn't know any of this when Paris first came to me with his story lineup for the previous day and asked for my thoughts. What I told him was that the group of seven headlines he had chosen struck me as very "Asia-centric." The lead story, and the longest, was China's three-day mourning period for victims of the Sichuan earthquake, followed by two headlines on the humanitarian crisis in 'Myanmar.' (Of course, CRI would not even consider offending the country's military junta by referring to 'Burma.') Only one headline at the bottom of the pile, concerning a Palestinian issue, referred to something outside Asia.
But management's complaint was that Paris' story selections were not Asian enough! Specifically, that he had not said enough about China's mourning for the Sichuan earthquake! Paris told me this, and showed me the text message, having secured from me a prejudice-free opinion about his story choices.
The pharisees are sharpening their knives again, straining gnats of omission about China's grief while swallowing camels of their own gaping omissions about the world's genocides, rapes, and falsehoods. And, worse, summarily dismissing an employee without any discussion or negotiation. One problem about his tone of voice in one part of one newscast, out of hundreds he has done, was enough, apparently, to write off a man and his entire contribution.
Furthermore, Paris does not even have final sign-off on his news content, yet the Chinese person who did sign off on his text seems to have been given a pass on this one!
Anyway, I was one of four foreign CRI employees Paris came to, in order to solicit other opinions about his news selections. He did so at management's suggestion. Having reported back the largely supportive findings of his colleagues regarding his decisions, management now wants to question us!
Bloody Hell. It's such a Keystone-Cops operation around here. Laughable, if it wasn't so vicious!
Briefings From Beijing - 17
I expect the feelings of the Chinese populace in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake will echo those of Americans following 9/11: Shock and disbelief; patriotic stirrings and an outpouring of aid and sympathy; starting to ask questions about how it could have been avoided or at least mitigated; realizing the government was complacent in the run-up to the catastrophe and incompetent thereafter; cover-up; repeated calls from leaders for patriotic compliance; leaving a legacy of deep distrust and an incurable wound of grief, loss and trauma.
"The difficulties continue for the living, in monumental disproportion to the attention given in the media," commented a friend in Chengdu, a former colleague at CDUT. "The happy faces of survivors being rescued by the army and other volunteers may have turned sour in learning that they may have to wait months or even years for a temporary home. Life in a tent in the rain and the heat with limited facilities to bathe, toilet, or even eat, will rapidly wear thin."
One of my former students, Evelina, whose family's home near Mianyang was obliterated in the earthquake, reports the government is deliberately understating the number of dead, while many "volunteers" have been helping themselves to loot.
We are doing what we can to help. Some of my U.S. friends have contributed money to Evelina's family, while the foreigner community in Beijing is organizing fund raisers.
In the end, I will turn to my friends, rather than the state-run media, to get an accurate picture of what's happening on the ground.
We in the West, though we may gamble speculatively, tend not to work speculatively. What I mean is that when we take on a job, we expect to be paid the agreed amount for our labor and on time.
Not so in China. Payment this month was a whole week late at CRI, aggravating the perpetual anxiety foreign employees here feel about whether the company will keep its part of the bargain. We hear that the company's foreign-affairs office is frequently in dispute with the financial department, while the managers of the English Service make their own contributions to the mixed messages and contradictory statements one hears from officialdom here. Certainly, the units are ready enough to pass blame from one to the other when things go wrong, but that doesn't help us much.
Don't just take my word for it. I quote from a brave letter written by my Australian colleague, Paris, to management:
"In what has become a monthly ritual, we foreign staff were paid late, and once again, no one paid us the courtesy of explaining where OUR MONEY was...
"If there are continuing problems within the CRI fiefdoms, why must our pay be caught in the middle of it?
"Why does no one in the CRI ENGLISH SERVICE office bother to explain that we foreigners will NEVER get paid on time any more? When I began working here in June, we were paid on the 4th of every month. Later, that became the 8th, and now it seems it will be the 11th.
"Why is nothing ever communicated to us?..."
And so on.
Meanwhile, I am not allowed to go on vacation because, eight months into the job, I still have not signed a one-year contract. The problem is: I still have not received a contract to sign! Or rather, I have received several versions of a contract in a continual cycle of revisions downgrading the terms of my employment!
The probationary contract, which I did sign at the outset, stipulated the salary would adjust once a two-month probationary period was completed. But the main contract CRI came up with, in one of its two lengthy appendices, actually presented a lower sum! Well, I suppose that's adjustment of a kind!
Then another revision quietly removed two vacation days for Christmas and turned a once mandatory travel allowance into a conditional one based on employee "performance." Now, the latest I have heard is that the six-page main contract (not including appendixes) has been expanded to a 13-page one! I am told it's because of "new laws and regulations" that came into effect this year.
Well, of course, there is the hackneyed argument always recited by Chinese administrators in such cases, that we foreign employees are so much better off than the Chinese ones, who sometimes work for months before getting their first pay check!
Unionize! I hear you say. Good idea! My complaints are, after all, standard fare among foreign employees here. Well, Mao be praised, we do have a union, though there has never been a single meeting. And our shop steward? Our CRI-appointed department manager who, for the last several months, has been trying to downgrade my salary while continually adding to the workload and responsibilities on my plate.
Run that by me again? We don't get to elect our own representatives? No. "We at CRI will select your representatives for you to negotiate with themselves about how they will treat you!"
Meanwhile, the Chinese government touts how it wants to attract foreigners to work in China! Well they won't get many at that speed!
Briefings From Beijing - 15
I suppose it had to come to this. "Sign the contract, or we will cancel your visa." I'm sure this threat – or something like it – has been dished out to many foreigners in China. And it's a threat that carries extra potency as we wait for the Olympics to play out before closing the chapter on our adventures abroad.
And the reasons for resisting contract terms are many. In my case, the latest revision to the pernicious document shaved off vacation days, halved the permitted number of sick days in a given year, and revoked the promise of a round-trip air ticket home upon renewing for a second year. That, and the introduction of new clauses enchancing management power, such as permission to withhold salary payment up to a month or in the case of an employee flouting unspecified "rules and regulations."
Oh, but I must give credit where credit is due: management did proffer a freelance arrangement, provided I was willing to accept half the amount of money for the same amount of work!
This in the context of a work burden so intense that it began to shrink one of my eyes! Yes, in a condition known as ocular myasthenia gravis, my left eyelid has begun drooping, presenting to my horrified gaze in the mirror the spectacle of disfigurement. Unlike book readers in the West, I must not only record this translated Chinese literature (with the additional challenges of figuring out Chinese pronunciations in both the Pinyin and Wade-Giles systems, along with fixing errors), but then edit the recordings and build entire episodes around them.
The strain of continually staring alternately from book to computer screen has taken a terrible toll, but in response to the doctor's note to take two weeks' rest, management (OK, it's about time I named names – he is deputy director of CRI's English service, Mr. Li Peichun) scoffed out loud, suggested the doctor was irresponsible, and refused to enhance the very primitive recording facilities with a book stand or a computer-screen filter to ease the strain on my eyes.
Curious that he shares the same family name, Li, as my nemesis in Leshan of 2006/2007. I might be inclined to decry that entire clan – just as I have blessed the name of Xie, because three outstanding individuals of that house have shown me extraordinary kindness since I came to China – were it not for my admiration of Li Bai, China's great antiwar poet of the Tang Dynasty.
Anyway, this Mr. Li complained too, that I had not recorded enough episodes during the month in question -- episodes which, I might add, CRI has made no effort to broadcast, despite my Herculean efforts in producing almost 100 of them so far. Nor has CRI made them available by Internet either, despite my detailed designs and preparations for this, nor followed through on months-old commitments to seek rights permissions from the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. In fact, management told me in the beginning that the permissions had already been obtained, but later reversed the assertion.
Meanwhile, I have gone to great lengths to seek permissions from other book publishers in the series, including waiting up to call a publisher in New York on a 12-hour time difference, and tracking down the author of another book now out of print.
And all the while, CRI continues to use my voice for soundbites, narrations, and promos for their other radio shows and pet projects, without a penny of extra compensation.
In the end, the equation came down to this: sign the contract, serve out the three months of my first year left to run on it, and leave peacefully; or continue to fight it and run afoul of employer and government in one fell swoop. I sought the Lord on this question and felt a sense of peace in opting for peace. Another month's salary is secured, and I am saving what's left of my vacation time as insurance against any unwelcome task reassignments.
Briefings From Beijing - 16
In one sense, I'm glad the heat's off me. This time, it's the turn of my friend and colleague Paris, to run afoul of management.
He showed me the text message sent him by...guess-who, Mr. Li Peichun, on Monday, complaining that Paris' "lethargy at the end of the broadcast was intolerable" and informing him that he was immediately suspended from newscasting as a result.
Now I didn't know any of this when Paris first came to me with his story lineup for the previous day and asked for my thoughts. What I told him was that the group of seven headlines he had chosen struck me as very "Asia-centric." The lead story, and the longest, was China's three-day mourning period for victims of the Sichuan earthquake, followed by two headlines on the humanitarian crisis in 'Myanmar.' (Of course, CRI would not even consider offending the country's military junta by referring to 'Burma.') Only one headline at the bottom of the pile, concerning a Palestinian issue, referred to something outside Asia.
But management's complaint was that Paris' story selections were not Asian enough! Specifically, that he had not said enough about China's mourning for the Sichuan earthquake! Paris told me this, and showed me the text message, having secured from me a prejudice-free opinion about his story choices.
The pharisees are sharpening their knives again, straining gnats of omission about China's grief while swallowing camels of their own gaping omissions about the world's genocides, rapes, and falsehoods. And, worse, summarily dismissing an employee without any discussion or negotiation. One problem about his tone of voice in one part of one newscast, out of hundreds he has done, was enough, apparently, to write off a man and his entire contribution.
Furthermore, Paris does not even have final sign-off on his news content, yet the Chinese person who did sign off on his text seems to have been given a pass on this one!
Anyway, I was one of four foreign CRI employees Paris came to, in order to solicit other opinions about his news selections. He did so at management's suggestion. Having reported back the largely supportive findings of his colleagues regarding his decisions, management now wants to question us!
Bloody Hell. It's such a Keystone-Cops operation around here. Laughable, if it wasn't so vicious!
Briefings From Beijing - 17
I expect the feelings of the Chinese populace in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake will echo those of Americans following 9/11: Shock and disbelief; patriotic stirrings and an outpouring of aid and sympathy; starting to ask questions about how it could have been avoided or at least mitigated; realizing the government was complacent in the run-up to the catastrophe and incompetent thereafter; cover-up; repeated calls from leaders for patriotic compliance; leaving a legacy of deep distrust and an incurable wound of grief, loss and trauma.
"The difficulties continue for the living, in monumental disproportion to the attention given in the media," commented a friend in Chengdu, a former colleague at CDUT. "The happy faces of survivors being rescued by the army and other volunteers may have turned sour in learning that they may have to wait months or even years for a temporary home. Life in a tent in the rain and the heat with limited facilities to bathe, toilet, or even eat, will rapidly wear thin."
One of my former students, Evelina, whose family's home near Mianyang was obliterated in the earthquake, reports the government is deliberately understating the number of dead, while many "volunteers" have been helping themselves to loot.
We are doing what we can to help. Some of my U.S. friends have contributed money to Evelina's family, while the foreigner community in Beijing is organizing fund raisers.
In the end, I will turn to my friends, rather than the state-run media, to get an accurate picture of what's happening on the ground.
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