Bus TV

There are over ten thousand buses in circulation in Beijing and the surrounding suburbs. Each bus is equipped with at least two flat-screen televisions, which amounts to at least ten million rmb for the whole system's TVs if they paid Haier the absurdly cheap price of 100 rmb/TV (1/5 of retail for the approximately three-year old model). I often wonder why a bus whose windows are so shoddy that they let the rain in even when fully closed needs a flat screen TV.

My first answer is propaganda. Force bored commuters to watch state-run CCTV (China Central Television) news every day and eventually they'll buy the party line. But today's broadcast didn't seem to uphold that position. First, there was traffic news telling you where to avoid jams. This is incredibly useful when you're on a bus with a predetermined route from which it will not deviate. Then there was a story about an American 20-something who started a bakery in a hutong. (His Chinese was very good.) The story failed to give the location of his shop. Then there was another human interest[1] story about a 97-year old Australian who jumped from an airplane. Fascinating.

I figured out the point of Bus TV: show tons of bad news stories that are lacking any detail or fact that could be useful or important so that when a real news story happens people will be so anesthetized they won't notice that it has an effect on them. Okay, this theory is far-fetched and the biggest problem is that it's too ingenious. The people at the propaganda department are some of the dumbest people in the government. They couldn't have come up with this.

And then another story took me back to my original theory: propaganda. The broadcaster, whose movie-preview voice gave an ominous tone to the whole thing, went through every Obama cabinet member's salary and the income they receive from outside the government. First, I would like to point out that the 200gs most of these people make from the taxpayers is pennies compared to the seven figures they could be making in the private sector. Most Chinese don't know this, of course, and it's downright shocking that these high-level government officials get paid the big bucks from outside sources in addition to their government salary during a major recession.

What should really blow Chinese people's minds, however, is the source of the story's information. Uncle Sam makes publicly available all the details of each of his employee's income.[2] When Uncle Wen (Jiabao) was giving his first online chat with netizens earlier this year, outrage over government officials' wealth compelled him to say, “We need to promote transparency of government affairs and also need to make public officials’ assets.” China ranks 80th worldwide in transparency and one of the top three countries where you are expected to bribe someone when doing business. Every other week, zealous netizens reveal some corrupt official who's been getting rich off bribes.

So what exactly was the point of showing how much money the American government officials make? Does CCTV actually think that Chinese people aren't aware of how much money influences politics here? Are they trying to convince people that America is more corrupt than China? Earlier this year, the CCTV-owned Mandarin hotel building went up in flames, to the delight of many Chinese. Perhaps it was because they were sick of the unavoidable media outlet treating them like ignorant little children.


[1] If 'human interest' means 'human beings would be actually interested in watching this story,' I suppose this doesn't qualify.
[2] If he didn't, the New York Times would.