Monitor cameras work in front of the giant portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, September 28, 2009. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo
The Guardian: 'Every place you go, you are being watched': reporting from Xi's China
The Guardian’s outgoing Beijing correspondent reflects on six years of increasing repression
“You don’t work out, do you?” inquired one of the officers who had summoned me to my hotel lobby in China’s pre-eminent police state. We had only checked in 10 minutes earlier and, after an exhausting week reporting along Xinjiang’s spectacular high-altitude border with Pakistan, I was desperate for a hot shower and a snooze.
But “Mike” and his partner “Max” – two Uighur police officers tasked with thwarting even the slightest hint of hostile foreign journalism in this ever more repressive region of western China – were insistent.
Could I pop down for a chat?
Over afternoon tea in the lobby of Kashgar’s Radisson Blu, we pondered my spindly, gym-deprived physique and Mike’s love of Flamenco music and his impeccable American English. White armoured personnel carriers trundled past the hotel’s fortified entrance and, finally, we came to the point.
Without the express permission of local authorities, reporting was strictly forbidden in these troubled parts, Mike informed me. Not only did I lack biceps, it seemed, but I lacked that too.
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WNU Editor: China has always been like that .... dissent was not tolerated, and those who protested were carted away. What is different now is that for the past few decades the Communist Party of China has bought social peace with the promise that the economy will boom under their rule, and that most Chinese citizens will benefit from this prosperity. But here is an easy prediction. The moment this understanding is broken .... and people are not benefiting from the promises that President Xi and his supporters have promised .... this type of rigid control will break.
