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00:08Hello, Telesur English presents a new episode of China Now.
00:13A web media's production that showcases the culture, technology and politics of the Asian giant.
00:18In this first segment, China Currents take a deep dive into the week's top stories.
00:23From several countries signing in a joint statement commemorating the 10th anniversary of the South China Sea Arbitration,
00:30ruling to China's first law dedicated entirely to ethnic affairs that took effect on July 1st.
00:37Let's see.
00:49Hello everyone and welcome to China Currents.
00:52On July 12th, 14 countries, the US, Philippines, Australia, Japan and others,
00:58got together and issued a joint statement commemorating the 10th anniversary of the South China Sea Arbitration ruling.
01:08China's Foreign Ministry response was one sentence long.
01:12The so-called ruling is a piece of waste paper.
01:17Which, fair enough, sounds like a diplomatic mic drop, but let's actually unpack why.
01:24Here's the thing most coverage skips entirely.
01:27This was never a ruling from the International Court of Justice.
01:31It has zero UN affiliation, zero enforcement power and a legitimacy problem that's been baked in since day one.
01:40It was a temporary tribunal.
01:43That's it.
01:43So what did this tribunal actually decide?
01:48Back in 2016, the panel in The Hague handed down a series of findings and the most absurd one was
01:55this.
01:56China's Taiping Island isn't an island, it's a rock.
02:01Now, Taiping Island is the largest natural island in the spread list.
02:07About 500,000 square meters or roughly 70 soccer fields.
02:11It has fresh water.
02:13It has soil you can farm.
02:15People raise chickens there.
02:18Chinese fishermen have lived and worked on it for centuries.
02:21The tribunal looked at all that and said, nope, that's a rock.
02:27And here's where it gets even more ridiculous.
02:30The tribunal's authority to rule on any of this never held up to begin with.
02:36Sovereignty disputes over islands were never within UNCLOS's jurisdiction in the first place.
02:43China filed an exclusionary declaration under Article 298 back in 2006, explicitly removing maritime boundary disputes from compulsory arbitration.
02:55Which, by the way, is a right the convention gives every signatory.
03:01On top of that, the Philippines filed unilaterally, breaking the bilateral consensus both countries had already agreed to,
03:08and violating the declaration on the conduct of parties in the South China Sea.
03:14The process was broken at the source.
03:18So, of course, the outcome carries no weight.
03:21And here's the punchline.
03:22The country leading the charge, demanding everyone respect international law over this ruling, is the United States.
03:31Which has never ratified UNCLOS.
03:34It hasn't joined the convention.
03:37It just enjoys quoting it at other people.
03:41Not one country backing this ruling has ever managed to explain that one with a straight face.
03:47So why does this ruling keep coming back every 10 years like clockwork?
03:51Because it was never really a legal question.
03:54It's a political tool, and it always has been.
03:57Look at who actually signed this year's statement.
04:01Fourteen countries.
04:03Besides the Philippines, not a single South China Sea country signed on.
04:08The five eyes showed up in full.
04:11The rest were mostly European countries, plus Japan.
04:15Out of ASEAN's 10 members, exactly one joined the commemoration.
04:20The countries that actually live on this water, whose fishermen actually depend on it, almost all of them stayed quiet.
04:29Which tells you everything.
04:31Ten years in, this ruling hasn't fixed a single real problem.
04:36The Philippines uses it to push maritime claims.
04:41Outside powers use it as an excuse to get involved.
04:45It hasn't calmed a single wave.
04:48If anything, it's a thing keeping tensions warm.
04:52And on the exact same day this statement dropped, China and ASEAN were in the room together,
04:57working on an actual code of conduct for the South China Sea.
05:02That's the difference.
05:03That's what countries that actually live here do.
05:06They sit down and hash it out themselves, instead of waiting for outsiders to hand them a verdict.
05:14Even in international legal circles, this ruling has never really settled the argument.
05:20Philip Saunders, Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University's Law School,
05:25has pointed out the tribunal failed to properly respect states' right to choose their own path to resolving disputes.
05:32Its legitimacy is still genuinely contested among legal scholars.
05:38Herman Laurel, who runs the Philippine think tank Asia Century, put it even more bluntly.
05:43This whole thing is a farce, staged start to finish by a US-backed Philippine proxy.
05:50So when 14 countries get together to celebrate a 10-year-old ruling, and Beijing calls it garbage,
05:58that's not China losing its temper.
06:01That's China pointing at the receipts.
06:04Let's turn to our second story.
06:07On July 1st, China's first law dedicated entirely to ethnic affairs took effect.
06:13The ethnic unity and progress promotion law.
06:17And almost every headline overseas zoomed in on exactly one clause.
06:22Article 63.
06:24Organizations or individuals outside China who carry out acts undermining ethnic unity can be held legally accountable.
06:33The US, the EU, Australia all jumped on it.
06:38Long armed jurisdiction.
06:40Transnational repression.
06:42The European Parliament actually called for the law to be scrapped entirely.
06:48So, I read the whole law.
06:50And reading it felt nothing, nothing like reading the coverage of it.
06:55Because here's what the other 64 articles actually say.
07:00All ethnic groups are equal under the law.
07:03Full stop.
07:04Discrimination banned.
07:06Minority languages get protected.
07:08Minority traditions get support for preservation and development.
07:13There are specific protections written in for employment, education, healthcare.
07:18There's even a line about strengthening commonality or respecting and accommodating difference.
07:24Which is, if anything, a pretty generous way to describe a country with 56 ethnic groups trying to figure out
07:33how to live together.
07:35Read start to finish.
07:38This reads like a law about coexistence.
07:41Then you hit Article 63.
07:44Yes, it says separatist acts from abroad can be prosecuted.
07:49And here's a question that actually matters.
07:52Is that unusual?
07:54Or is that just what every country already does?
07:57The USA Patriot Act prosecutes terrorism committed abroad.
08:02The UK's Terrorism Act holds British citizens liable for terrorism offences overseas.
08:08Germany's Criminal Code Section 6 has explicit extraterritorial jurisdiction written in.
08:14France, Australia, Canada, same story.
08:20When a country says, don't cross this line from outside our borders, that's not long arm jurisdiction.
08:26That's just a line.
08:29Look, China's ethnic policy gets debated constantly overseas, in an environment where trust is already thin.
08:36So the second clause says outside China plus accountability, people's brains jump straight to one image.
08:44China's about to start prosecuting foreigners for having opinions.
08:48But that's not what the article targets.
08:51It targets actual separatist destructive acts, not commentary, not academic research, not journalism.
08:59It has nothing to do with ordinary cultural or economic exchange between China and the rest of the world.
09:05The article is about actions, not speech.
09:10What actually deserves more attention is the other 64 articles.
09:14Protection, respect, equality, development, inclusion.
09:19Words that, funny enough, almost never make it into the English coverage.
09:24So here's a genuine invitation.
09:26Go read the actual text, not the summary, not the headline.
09:31And ask yourself one honest question.
09:33Is this law helping ethnic minorities live better or boxing them in?
09:39I think the answer is pretty obvious.
09:41The problem is a lot of people walked in with the conclusion already decided
09:45and just went looking for the parts that confirmed it.
09:49But whatever side of this you land on, here's a fact underneath it all.
09:53China has 56 ethnic groups, 125 million people from ethnic minorities
09:59and over the past decade, all 420 designated poverty counties in ethnic autonomous regions
10:05have been lifted out of poverty.
10:08Writing the Chinese national community into law is China formally putting on paper
10:13how it intends 56 groups to keep living side by side.
10:17Enough policy for now.
10:19Let's talk about some tech.
10:21On July 10th, the Long March 10B lifted off from the Hainan commercial launch site,
10:27put its satellite payload into orbit, and 487 seconds later, its first stage landed on target
10:35on a recovery ship called Linghangze, about 430 kilometers out at sea.
10:42This is the world's first sea-based net capture recovery of an orbital rocket.
10:48Also China's first controlled recovery of an orbital rocket stage, period.
10:54Up until now, there was really one playbook for landing a rocket.
10:59SpaceX's version, where the thing grows landing legs and sticks the landing like a gymnast,
11:05China looked at that and said, actually, let's just drop it in a net.
11:09It sounds simple, but it's not.
11:11Behind it is landing point precision measured across hundreds of kilometers,
11:16plus a ship that has to catch a falling object at high speed on open water without missing.
11:23What do you actually get for skipping the legs?
11:25About two tons of weight gone, which goes straight back into payload capacity.
11:31The recovery mode performance penalty drops to around 15%.
11:35This ship can operate steady in four-meter waves.
11:38It's not locked to a fixed launch site, and it can tolerate a landing miss of up to 50 meters.
11:45A much bigger margin for error than legs ever gave you.
11:48Elon Musk himself has said, more or less, that Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Europe's Ariane program have all fallen behind.
11:56And that SpaceX's one real competitor left standing is China.
12:01That day, Long March 10B's recovery succeeded.
12:05SpaceX's stock dropped 4.5% intraday.
12:09Markets, as usual, were more honest than any op-ed.
12:12To be fair, Long March 10B and Starship aren't in the same race.
12:17Starship's chasing 100-ton payloads at Mars.
12:21Long March 10B is a mid-sized commercial rocket built for one job.
12:26Cheap, frequent deployment of low-orbit satellite constellations.
12:31Different lanes, both useful.
12:33A rocket's first stage is usually 60-80% of the total cost.
12:38Get it back in one piece, reuse it, and the price of getting anything into orbit drops fast.
12:44Which is exactly the precondition for things like satellite internet and orbital data centers to actually scale.
12:50This is what makes it real.
12:52A working alternative path.
12:54And the foundation of China's commercial space industry needs to go from proving a concept to actually running a business.
13:03Not every story this week is a win.
13:05In Guangxi, China, Typhoon Maysac just triggered the most extensive, most intense flooding on record.
13:13About 77% of townships across Guangxi saw storm-level rain or worse.
13:19Nanning, Guigang, Qingzhou, Fangchenggang all passed 600 millimeters of cumulative rainfall.
13:27Multiple weather stations blew past their historical records entirely.
13:31As of 8pm on July 7th, 63 counties and districts across all 14 prefecture-level cities in Guangxi were affected.
13:41375,000 people impacted.
13:446 dead.
13:4511 missing.
13:47130,000 people evacuated on emergency footing.
13:51Nearly 13,000 hectares of crops destroyed.
13:54The response moved fast.
13:57Regional, municipal, county-level emergency systems all activated at once.
14:03Firefighters, armed police, engineering rescue teams moved into the flood zones overnight, gear and all.
14:10Levy reinforcement, evacuations, supply run, all happening in parallel.
14:15But out of everything unfolding, one site pulled in the most attention.
14:20Sijiang Education Park in Guigang, where tens of thousands of teachers and students were trapped.
14:26At its worst, the flood water there hit 7 meters deep.
14:31That's a two-story building underwater.
14:3411 schools in the city were affected.
14:36About 32,000 people trapped inside.
14:39One high school student filmed the whole thing on an action camera.
14:4372 hours of it.
14:45Water rising.
14:46Power out.
14:47No signal.
14:49And still, teachers and dorm staff went door to door.
14:52New students, floor by floor.
14:54Stayed calm the entire time.
14:56And that's when the full rescue effort got underway.
15:00On the water and in the air.
15:02On the water, a motorized pontoon bridge did most of the heavy lifting.
15:06Nicknamed the rescue carrier, this 60 meter floating metal bridge unfolds itself the second it hits the water and can
15:14move several hundred people across in a single pass.
15:18China Aneng Group brought in more than 100 pieces of specialized gear and evacuated over 6,000 people in the
15:25first 24 hours alone.
15:27By 1.20pm on July 9th, every single one of the 12,000 plus trapped teachers and students at Sijiang
15:34was out and safe.
15:35In the air, drone fleets kept supply lines open to areas the floods had cut off completely.
15:42Flying around the clock, each drone carried 50 to 150 kilograms of water, food and medicine per trip straight into
15:49the hands of people who had no other way to get it.
15:52The rescue footage traveled overseas too.
15:55Some commentators said their first instinct was to assume it was AI generated.
16:00It looked that unreal.
16:02Others said this is exactly what drones should be for.
16:06Not war.
16:07Keeping people alive.
16:09Thank you so much for watching this episode of China Currents.
16:13We'll see you next time.
16:16Today.
17:03Welcome back to China Now.
17:05In the second segment, Thinkers Forum features Roughly Chinese podcast
17:09and welcomes Syevalot Pulya, head of Russia Today China.
17:13To explore journalism in the actual global context, the narrative of contemporary media,
17:19with a view on how the Western media narratives have influenced the perception of global communities.
17:25Let's have a look.
17:37The life thrives there, like we went to some bars and the local martineries, they spoke
17:43really good English, something you wouldn't expect from a remote region.
17:48So, I was struck by the scale of the place, you know, scale also in terms of the nature,
17:55because those mountains are really there and they really make a huge impression on you.
18:01I think there needs to be an understanding that the stories of the people are actually what
18:05is the most important and we as people should be confident in ourselves enough to think of
18:10ourselves as important enough to be told, to be talked about. Not just the thing we built,
18:15but who we are and how we feel, I think is just as important.
18:20Hello, everyone, and welcome to another new episode of Roughly Chinese. I'm your host,
18:24Yunpeng.
18:25I'm Mimi.
18:26We have a guest with us today.
18:29Sivan, would you mind telling us who you are, what you're doing?
18:32Sure, yeah. Thanks for having me here today.
18:34My name is Syevalot Pulya. It's a complicated Russian name, so I'll just go by Syeva, Syeva.
18:41Yeah, that's short for Syevalot. And I work as a head of RT China, which is a Chinese department
18:46of a Russian international TV channel, RT, formerly known as Russia Today, but they're
18:52still being called Russia Today. Yeah, but the official name is RT, you know?
18:57Awesome.
18:58And how many years have you been living in China at this point?
19:01Actually, the first year I came was three years ago, 2023, when we set on a task to open
19:07our office in Shanghai. And I've been in and out for the last three years. I've been in and
19:12spent a half a year in China, half a year in Moscow. And the last time I came to China
19:18was December 2025. So now I'm staying for longer because now the office is established and we
19:23have much more stuff to do. We have many collaborations with local Chinese media. We have an office
19:29of 14 people here in Shanghai, 14. So yeah, there was a lot to do. And I believe that my
19:36presence
19:37in China is more beneficial because we still have quite a large group in Moscow working for it in
19:43China as well.
19:44You guys have a beautiful office. I went to the Putin office once. It's much better than ours,
19:49let's just say. It overlooks the Huangpu River, right?
19:53Yeah, but you know, the trouble of getting an office, it was enormous. Yeah, we spent more than a
20:00year to secure a location.
20:02I'm sure a lot of other companies are also eyeing for that office because it's just so good. How many,
20:08so before you started at RT, were you a journalist? Like what did you do before going to RT?
20:15Yeah, sure. Like I, both my parents are journalists. So they told me never do journalism.
20:20Try to choose a different profession.
20:22And my dad was a journalist and he gave me the same advice.
20:24Yeah, I think I will be telling my son the same, you know, but something is like,
20:28it's like a curse. Yeah, like the whole bloodline is curse.
20:31Oh my God.
20:32So yeah, when I was in high school, I tried doing some math, but I'm really bad at numbers,
20:38you know, and trying to get ready to enter some economic faculty or something. But yeah,
20:45I think I proved in the high school, I proved that I'm really bad at numbers. And I ultimately
20:51entered the Moscow State University Faculty of Journalism. And I worked for different magazines,
20:58newspapers. I covered tech, Internet, technology, did reviews on smartphones, on Huawei, by the way,
21:07on Apple phones. I was invited to Apple launch events in California. And then I joined the project
21:15called Russia Beyond the Headlines. It's a project launched by Russian state paper of record called
21:21Российская газета, which literally translates as Russian newspaper. You can view it as like Russian
21:27Jimmy Jabal. In 2007, they launched the project, Russia Beyond the Headlines. Yeah. And I joined as a
21:34digital editor. So I was working on everything digital. I was running the website. I launched the social
21:41media and like the project grew and my career went forward. So I was in 2015, I was appointed the
21:50editor-in-chief of the project. And in 2016, we actually shut down all the print operations because
21:56the circulations have been going down around the whole world. The Crimea crisis happened. So Western
22:04partners weren't so willing to partner with us anymore. So we had to shut down all the print
22:12operations. But the project still lives, you know. And the end of 2016, it was transferred to RT. So
22:19actually, I wasn't hired by RT technically. I was like transferred as a part of a merger. And then when
22:27I was working at RT for that project in 2019, they offered me to oversee the Chinese department of RT,
22:35which at the time consisted of only one person. And I said, sorry, you guys, I don't speak Chinese. They
22:40said, it's okay, that girl speaks English. So from that, it grew into a full scale operations.
22:47I mean, I was going to ask you, what is the mission of RT China? You know, having a presence,
22:53RT's presence in China, what is the goal? Yeah, you know, it's a very good question,
22:58because RT in general, it was created and marketed as an answer to like Western mainstream media,
23:07to oppose them, to show that there is much more than the narratives that are being
23:12pushed by this Western media monopolies in many regions, even in Asian regions. So we were trying,
23:20the main RT international, it still tries to find the stories that are being underreported or not
23:26reported enough, or simply avoided by the Western media. But in China, it's different. I mean, we are,
23:34I think we are speaking the same language. We have the same values, Russia and China. I mean,
23:38so there is nothing to compete here about, right? So I think for RT China, our mission is to build
23:44a
23:44bridge between Russia and China. Because even though Russia and China have been friends for a long
23:50time in our history, and are great friends now, there are still many stereotypes. I would tell you
23:56that a lot of Russians, they still have a very stereotypical view of China, at least those who
24:01haven't traveled here. And I can say the same about the Chinese audience, like, and it's OK, it's fine.
24:08I mean, people do care mostly about their backyard, about what's happening at home, not about some
24:13countries, even though they are big countries or neighboring countries. So the world is still
24:19relies on a lot of stereotypes. So we see the mission of RT China is, of course, to report world
24:25news,
24:26because that's our, like, bread, so to say, that's our main stuff, what we are doing, but also to work
24:32as a cultural language, historical bridge between our countries.
24:38Absolutely. And so the bridge is being formed not just on the Russian side, but also on the Chinese
24:43side, right? You're debunking the Western misconceptions or Western-fueled misconceptions
24:49for both sides, which I think is really important. Because I think a lot of the time, what Western
24:55media does is it infiltrates countries in the global South as well, and makes us all think of each other
25:01in ways. In ways it divides and conquers in terms of, like, your ideologies and mentality. And so I
25:09think there's something very special that we're actually just cutting out that part now, and we're
25:13like, let's just talk to each other, instead of relying on these monopolies and these mainstream ideas.
25:19You are extremely right here, Mimi, because I can tell you that a huge chunk of Russian audience are
25:25still getting their news about China from translators, stories from news outlets like Financial Times,
25:32BBC, CNN, and so on. So it doesn't go directly from Chinese sources, because there are more,
25:39I would say, people who speak English in Russia than those who speak Chinese. I'm one of them,
25:43unfortunately, so far. So, yeah, there are more media outlets who retell the Western stories about
25:49China than tell the Chinese stories about China. So inside of RT, like a bigger, greater RT, we also
25:57work as sort of China experts. So people from RT in Russian or RT International, which broadcasts in
26:05English, they reach out to us when they have questions about what's going on in China, when they
26:10are unsure about how to report in a certain situation, which experts to reach out to. I mean, even Russian
26:17experts, because there are like a multitude of them, some of them are more experienced, some of them
26:22are just info businessmen who sell themselves as China experts, but they are not. So we also help to,
26:32yeah, like the main goal is to work with the Chinese audience to deliver their content and use to the
26:38Chinese audience. But there is an inside mission for us to be China experts for greater RT.
26:44Why do you think that there is this persistent problem, that even though there are English
26:49language media that's covering China from China, people in global sales countries, including people
26:55in Russia, are still preferring to hear, to get their news from traditional Western mainstream outlets,
27:01such as Financial Times, BBC, New York Times? Well, there are multiple factors here. I think the greatest
27:07factor is time. It's just the world we live in, the information world, it has been shaped by Western
27:16media because they, like the West, invested a lot of money in those outlets, huge money, and they work
27:24not in a detached way, they work as a complex system. All of it, not only newspapers, websites, social media,
27:32but also
27:33Hollywood movies, songs, podcasts, everything. Yeah, it's like a big network of information that you can easily,
27:43like a worldwide web, you can get easily caught in this web. And it takes time to educate your audience
27:51about alternative news sources, about alternative points of view, about the bias that comes with
27:59certain narratives and with certain, like, sources. Of course, you always have to ask the question,
28:05like, where the money are coming from, or who's, like, who is interested in publishing or not publishing
28:10these news. It requires media literacy in general. I think the lack of media literacy is one of the biggest
28:18plagues in the modern world. Because it's something that is not taught at schools, or at least not taught enough.
28:24It might be taught at the universities. Yes. But there is no such thing as media literacy.
28:29And I think... So by media literacy,
28:31you mean, like, teaching audiences how to recognize, like, biases in reporting, like, stuff like that?
28:36Exactly, exactly. And just be more, develop more critical thinking skills.
28:41Always think about the source, the funding, the agenda of the certain, you know, actor in this system.
28:48I think it's really important to start educating kids from very early ages to understand this,
28:54because this information, it has an influence on our life decisions and on our perception of the reality.
29:03And ultimately, when it comes to a certain scale, it influences the political decisions,
29:09and very important life choices. So we have to invest in this. So yeah, time, lack of media literacy,
29:19maybe some, you know, like we learn a lot from the Western mainstream media as well. Now they started
29:26to learn from us, but they are very skilled at their job. We have to give them credit. They are
29:33very
29:33skilled. So yeah, they are. It's a very, very sophisticated operation. You know, like you said,
29:40I have friends who come from overseas, and they come to China, and they're like,
29:43the propaganda in China is very clearly propaganda. Whereas the propaganda in the US is like,
29:49so subtle, right? It's just like, completely melting into your subconscious. I guess I wanted to like,
29:57tie that into how I met you. You know, I met you like a couple weeks ago, and we went
30:03to a media
30:04conference in Tibet, Xi Zhang. And I just wanted to like, talk about that. Because, you know, talking
30:11about Western media and everything, and my own journey of sifting through everything, of course,
30:16Western media has completely infiltrated my brain. And so there's places in China that I,
30:21that are targeted in terms of like separatist narratives, or, you know, they're trying to
30:27create some kind of divide. And so for me, I, I've got to this point where my immediate
30:32literacy has to be like, let me just go and make my own judgment, right? Like, that's the only way
30:37I
30:37think you can do it. So we actually did have the opportunity to go. And I just want to ask
30:42you,
30:42you know, if you also kind of grew up hearing narratives like that, and what your impressions of Tibet
30:49actually were? Before coming to Tibet, I really didn't have a very clear picture in my mind of
30:57the place and of the people there. It was like, like with most places, it was narrowed down to
31:05several terms like spirituality, mountains, remoteness, and that's it. I know there were monks,
31:12I know there's Buddhism there. I know because there are two Buddhist regions in Russia,
31:20Kalmykia and Buryatia, and a lot of people from there, like my wife is from Buryatia. A lot of
31:24people from these regions, they like to, to be pilgrims to, to go to Tibet and... We saw quite a
31:30few
31:30Russian tourists. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were some tourist groups there. So yeah. And when you,
31:37when you see these pictures on the internet, they just carve into your mind as like some remote villages,
31:42monks, and that's it. But of course, I think not a single place can be reduced to like one line
31:49or
31:50several images. And the situation on the ground is much more complex, of course. And I think that,
31:57not problems, I would say, but one of the parts of the Tibetan image is that, OK, can these traditional
32:04roots coexist with modern development? And I think what I saw is there is no contradiction, because we saw
32:12very modern infrastructure there. We saw people using the same services like in other regions of
32:17China, mobile payments, electric scooters, which we, and Mimi, you took a ride on some of them.
32:23I did. The Alipay remote scooters. Yeah, it was just riding around.
32:28Do they have that in Tibet? Yeah, they don't even have that in Shanghai.
32:31Yeah, exactly. Like, I think we're missing now them in Shanghai, because they have a motor and
32:36shared bikes here. They don't have a motor. The bus stops had huge screens on them with some
32:44information, advertising, everything. There were some very beautiful universities there that I've seen,
32:52and students around them. So the life thrives there. Like, we went to some bars and the local
32:59bartenders, they spoke really good English, something you wouldn't expect from a remote
33:05region. So I was struck by the scale of the place, you know, scale also in terms of the nature,
33:14because those mountains are really there, and they really make a huge impression on you. And
33:21some of my friends, like one of my colleagues, she actually was afraid to go there,
33:26and she decided not to go because of her fear of high altitude sickness. And I dismissed all these
33:32things. And I was like, oh, OK, like, I won't be bothered by it. But actually, it struck me too,
33:39you know? The first two days were really bad for me in terms of health. Like, I had a very
33:45major headache because of lack of oxygen. Because Olhasa, where the conference took place and where
33:51they took us, it sits at 3,650 meters above the sea level. And so, when you arrive by plane,
33:59you are
34:00there without any adaptation. You're just there at that altitude. And I felt it immediately when we
34:05exited out of the pressurized airplane. I felt some dizziness first. And that dizziness, it quickly
34:11grew into a headache. And that headache didn't let me go for the next two days. I was literally
34:17breathing on the oxygen tank. Yeah, you finished one in like hours.
34:22Just having, I need another one. Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. And at first, they were laughing at me.
34:28But then,
34:28one of our colleagues, she felt even worse. And also, by the end of the trip, like on day 5th,
34:35I fully recovered. I even went for a run. Oh, gosh. Yeah, even though like my heart rate was much
34:41higher
34:41than running on a lower ground or at a lower altitude. It felt really good. I enjoyed it.
34:48That's crazy. But it's crazy. They went on a run. It's crazy. I'm sure you're the only one
34:53who went on a run. Was he the only one? Yes. And I thought he was crazy for it.
34:58I've seen local people there running. Of course. So I decided, why not? Yeah. Yeah,
35:02yeah, absolutely. We also went to a park, which was one of my most memorable things. And actually,
35:08everywhere I go in China, I just want to go to the local park, because I think that's a great
35:13insight
35:13into local everyday life. So it was like a Tuesday or something, a Tuesday morning.
35:18Yeah, Wednesday morning. A Wednesday morning. Every morning from like 9 to 12 and beyond,
35:25there's just local Tibetan traditional dancing. And it's specifically where everyone just like
35:30dances in a circle together. And they like spin and they twirl. And it's really fun. And it's really
35:37like, it really gets you. And you joined. I joined. I joined. It just, it just felt natural. And
35:43I didn't have any trouble with altitude sickness. So I was also able to be very active. Okay. But I
35:49think seeing that not only seeing, you know, the elder people in their traditional garments and their
35:54robes, wearing their beads, wearing their necklaces, spinning these dials, everybody was just holding
36:00these dials that also are rounds of like mantras. Also, a lot of young people doing that too.
36:07Arguably, and I think we talked about this, more young people involved in the traditional dancing
36:11there than I've ever seen in Shanghai. Yeah, the whole park was dancing. It's like,
36:16and they didn't stop. I mean, we arrived there around 1030. And we stayed there until like 12 or even
36:22longer. And they didn't stop dancing. It's like the whole park was dancing. Was it a weekend?
36:27Like, weren't they supposed to? No, it was Wednesday. Oh, Wednesday. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Okay.
36:31And the monasteries out there are beautiful. I haven't seen Patala Palace even on the pictures
36:36before. But when I saw it, the main, the main palace of Tibet, that was like something out of
36:43this world. Seriously. I took so many pictures. Yeah. And there's actually different lanes. So because
36:48Patala Palace, right, is one of the more touristic places now, like everybody wants to see it. It's so grand,
36:55it's so beautiful. But they have two different sections where one is for locals and one is for
37:00tourists. And I remember sometimes the lanes would merge and the locals would really be like doing
37:06their mantras, doing their prayers, like really, really devoted. And you'd see locals all the time
37:11just going on their weekend pilgrimages. I made really good friends with some young Tibetan girls.
37:17And I would ask them, you know, do you still practice this? Like, is it still part of your
37:22everyday life? And they say, yeah, every weekend we go to temple for hours. And they said, honestly,
37:27that is less than what our parents do. Our parents go like every single day, but we go like every
37:33weekend still. Do you think they go because it's like religiosity or do you think it's just part of
37:38civic life nowadays? People go to like religious places like we go to parks?
37:42Potentially both. Yeah, I think it's so deeply ingrained in Tibetan culture that I do think it
37:47is part of everyday life. And at the same time, you know, I think if you're raised in a household
37:53that is so religious, and clearly, it's, it's continued for generation after generation.
37:58It's like you and communism.
37:59Well, exactly. It's in my blood. It's in my bones, you know, so I think for my friends,
38:04for them, it's like not even a thought. It's just like, this just comes naturally to me.
38:08I asked them, I'm like, do you know all the prayers? Do you know the chants? They're like, yeah,
38:12we just do. It's, it's almost like second nature to know them. Obviously, there's some really complex
38:18ones that maybe some of them haven't studied thoroughly. But most of them yet they're like,
38:22of course, it's like the back of my hand. Yeah, it felt like for many people,
38:26it was a very convenient way to socialize, you know, just to spend time together to meet new people,
38:32to feel like you're part of a community. Yeah, I think the community sense is very,
38:39you can feel it there, you can feel it, you can feel it that they are a community. They are
38:44not,
38:44of course, they're all individuals, but they thrive as a community. Yeah.
38:49I 100% agree with you. And I think that, like you said, you know, you see one version of
38:55the story
38:56being told in the US, and then one version being told in China, and I don't think either of them
39:01do
39:01it justice. Neither of them tell the beauty of Xi Zhang and seeing it for ourselves, going to Tibet
39:08and like, like you said, meeting the local people, that are the, those are the stories that move people
39:13the most. Those are the stories that are the most impactful. And I think speak thousands and
39:19thousands of words that like facts and figures can't, you know, of course, I understand the pragmatic
39:23necessity to back things up. And I, that is professionalism to the T. But at the same time,
39:30where are the people involved in this? Okay, you have this great infrastructure project,
39:33how has it improved the lives of everyday people? Even if you zoom in on one specific family or one
39:40specific story, you know, when I snuck out, I got to talk to local people, because thankfully,
39:44I can speak Chinese, and I can communicate locally. And all I would do is just ask people, you know,
39:51like, what is life like? How has Xi Zhang changed? And they gush about it, you know,
39:56and it's not even political, it's not even ideological. What do they say about how Xi Zhang has
40:01changed? Well, they say, look how clean our roads are. That's always a big one, they say.
40:05It's so easy to get around now, you know, like, I can't like, they always say like, it feels very
40:10peaceful here. That was a big word being used. It's so peaceful, you know, and I really, really enjoyed,
40:17and I think learned way more talking to and interacting with local people. And I personally
40:24will say I think one of the maybe gaps or, you know, misconceptions here is that I think maybe
40:32as Chinese media is developing this skill, Chinese media may not know the importance of these stories
40:39because, and this is just like a personal take. I think that Chinese media is very obsessed with
40:47wanting to prove something to Western audiences, right? Prove that we're getting ahead. Prove that
40:53we have these impressive things like, look, you guys have bridges, we have bridges. Look at this
40:57amazing bridge we have. Look at this amazing museum we have, right? I get that, right? We've been,
41:03you know, on the back burner for so long. We've been looked down upon for so long. Of course,
41:08you should be proud of these things. But I still don't think there is enough of a pride of
41:14the people itself. I think there needs to be an understanding that the stories of the people are
41:19actually what is the most important. And we as people should be confident in ourselves enough
41:24to think of ourselves as important enough to be told, to be talked about, not just the thing we
41:30built, but who we are and how we feel, I think is just as important. I mean, I said during
41:35the media
41:37conference during my speech, I just said like, we need to believe our stories are worthy of being told
41:41as individual people. You know, and I still I honestly kind of think it's a bit of a confidence
41:48thing. Because also, we mentioned this a lot of the time with Chinese media, they're very hyper fixated
41:55on getting footage of a white, Western, European or American guy being impressed by something,
42:04instead of a local person being having their life changed by something. And that's something that's
42:10bothered me for so long, because it's not indicative of what China has done for Chinese people,
42:17definitely. And two, it shows this lack of confidence, it shows that, oh, look, you, you like us.
42:24Yeah, it's like, we always need some external validation. Yeah, same problem as in Russia.
42:28Yeah, it's the same. It's the same. It's like we always rely on some external validation,
42:33but we have to be confident. And I think in our international communications, both Russia and China,
42:38we have to less answer to some claims or demands, but and more pick up and create our own narratives,
42:47create our own frames in which we want to talk about our countries. During this communication
42:52conference, a lot has been told about, a lot has been said about the necessity of bringing external
42:58voices to Tibet, more influencers, more media, international media, blah, blah, blah. And this
43:05is important, of course. But during the discussion, we also like came up with an idea of creating a
43:12program for local storytellers, because there are a lot of people who want to tell their stories
43:18themselves. And with the help of like social media, smartphones, it's as easy as this has never been
43:23before. And so I think any region can rely on local storytellers and try to create a system which
43:31rewards them with, I don't know, money or at least give them some means to communicate better,
43:39build shared studios for them, provide them with shared equipment that they can use to tell better
43:45stories and so on and so forth. Because some people are really great natural storytellers
43:52In each society, there are a lot of great natural storytellers. Just give them the environment for
43:58them to show their skills and to tell their stories themselves, and you will thrive.
44:02In this like media conference you went to in Tibet, did you meet any local storytellers,
44:07like influencers or like media producers who are doing the kind of things that you think should be
44:12done in Tibet? Funnily enough, actually, during the conference itself, there were not that many
44:19local Tibetan speakers who were of these like, you know, influences, or that there was like a
44:26Kazakh girl, I remember. But most of the Tibetan people that I met at the conference were the ones
44:33interviewing. Yeah, you know, and again, those were the people that I made friends with. And when I spoke
44:41to them, I learned the most from them. I'm like, honestly, why the heck am I on this podium? You
44:47should be on
44:47this podium? Do you know what I mean? So, again, I think it's a confidence thing. I think it's just
44:53like,
44:53there's still a position or a self-imposed position of, you know, oh, I don't think I am worthy of
45:00telling this. I don't think this is important enough. You know, the conference was organized by
45:05Cezanne Information Center. And I was on stage with their representative, and he was like, speaking
45:13about what they're already doing in terms of promoting Tibetan international audiences. And
45:17they're already doing quite a lot. During his speech, I was just, you know, crossing out the
45:21things that I wanted to talk in my speech. Okay, they're already doing this. Okay, maybe it's not
45:25worth mentioning. So they're already doing a lot. And we have to give them credit for that. But I think
45:32in international communication, it's also very important to not only have some institutional voices,
45:38but also to support independent voices, both local and external. So that's something that can be done.
45:46Hmm. So when you were like crossing off stuff from your list, do you think it's just they have
45:51recently started this program of pushing Tibetan voices outside, that we still need to give them
45:56more time? Or do you think there's something else they have to pay attention to? What's the main obstacles
46:01to achieving the kind of things that you two are saying that we should achieve in places like Tibet,
46:06to tell their stories? Well, it definitely takes time, you cannot simply replace one stereotype with
46:13another stereotype, right? And the confidence thing that you two both mentioned, like, it takes
46:18maybe like a generation for people to grow that kind of confidence. And like, if you don't have that
46:24confidence, no external validation is going to provide you that. And in fact, I think you can even
46:29say, it worsens that kind of inferiority syndrome, if you can get validation from whatever that you push
46:37outside, you'd think, Oh, I'm getting a positive feedback, whatever they want, as long as can provide it,
46:42I don't need like, self sufficient confidence from myself, I can just get it from external sources. But only
46:48after that source of validation from the outside has been cut off, does individual have like a necessary need to
46:55generate that kind of self sufficient confidence, but that takes so long, right? Like it goes back to
47:00education, like people have to learn their own history, it goes to like infrastructure investment
47:05in like allowing people to do the kind of media production that you two mentioned that they should
47:10be doing. So like, what are the policy suggestions that if the propaganda department is sitting right
47:16here from Tibet, that you can say like, these are the things that you should be doing, if you haven't
47:21been
47:21doing them? Like, what are the policies that you suggest they like start off right now?
47:26Wow, you want to suggest some policies, oh my gosh. Strategy, let's talk strategy now.
47:30Strategy, not policy. Yeah, I can just retell some of the points from my presentation, from my speech.
47:37First of all, you cannot treat international audience as a homogeneous thing, right? There is no such
47:44thing as international audience. To begin with, there are like hundreds of countries, right? In those countries,
47:49there are like millions of people with different motivation to learn how to visit a certain region.
47:55Like we have students, we have tourists, we have businessmen, we have politicians,
47:59we have people who try to find their life partner and so on. And with all of them, you have
48:03to
48:04communicate in a different way and put different things first. So there is a very simple like
48:09communication metrics. I think it goes back to the researcher by the name Laswell. It's like,
48:15first you have to pick your audience. Then you have to pick your channel through which you will be
48:20talking to this audience. Then you have to pick the tone of your message. And then you have to formulate
48:25the message itself. Because in most cases, it starts with the message, oh, we have to tell the world
48:31about this. But what the world, define the world, right? First, you have to see the people you are talking
48:39to.
48:40You know, I do some media consulting to other media companies. And what we do with them, if they don't
48:46have budget for marketing research or for social research, we just get together and try to segment
48:53their audience using our expert judgments. And segment this audience and try to describe these segments,
49:00not as a group of people, but as a person. It's called a persona method. So you create several personas
49:08who will represent a certain audience groups for your media. And you put a face to it, right?
49:14You can now generate a face or you can find a photo that somehow will represent. Or you can actually
49:21find the real people from your audience. Try to talk to your readers or viewers and find real people
49:26who are representing a certain group of people. And for many news teams, for many editorial teams,
49:33it really helps to put that poster with those personas on the wall. And then look at them when
49:38you have your editorial discussions. It's like, will he be interested to hear that story? Will she be?
49:44And if he or she is interested in reading, where will they read? In what format? So audience comes first.
49:50Audience is the cornerstone of anything you do in communication. It starts with the audience,
49:55not with what you want to say. Because you have to really get deep into people's psychology and into
50:02people's motivation. Because otherwise, your content won't resonate with them.
50:07I guess it goes back to what both of you are saying, allowing grassroots people to produce
50:12contents. Because on one, they are the greatest common denominator. Humanity is a lot of things.
50:18Personalities, they're the same. If you allow people to communicate the most basic emotions,
50:22it gets to the most amount of people. And also, it's the greatest amount of number. If you are
50:27a centralized production company, you can only do so much. But if you allow the people to generate
50:31contents by themselves, that's the greatest way to achieve the most amount of people.
50:37I think like you were saying, our global audiences are not a hegemon. Obviously,
50:41Russian and Chinese audiences also cannot just be melded together. But there's very sweet moments
50:47where we actually do connect. And we can find common ground. And not only just talk about how,
50:52you know, different elements of history, but also moments in culture like that one that you just said.
50:58So, yeah, I hate to be the cynic here, but I have a skeptical comment.
51:02I wanted to end on this. Sorry, sorry. We can shoot this and then we cut this into
51:07somewhere else. But I have a cynical question. Because I think when a lot of people hear that what we're
51:12discussing to better promote a narrative that's long been suppressed, they would view tailoring
51:19content to what you know to be the content that they crave, to be something that's like creating
51:24or reinforcing an echo chamber around a person's media consumption. So for that hypothetical kind of
51:32nostalgic older Chinese viewer, they would say that instead of trying to reinforce that bubble of kind
51:38of Soviet Chinese friendship nostalgia, you should like push him to learn more about the relation,
51:44the factors that define contemporary Russia Chinese relationship, which is arguably more complex
51:50in a more complex world than like that three year or 10 years in the late 40s to like early
51:5650s.
51:56So how would you respond to that argument saying this is unhealthy? This might be good for us as media
52:02companies, but that's not good for society and not good for individuals who are feeding onto our algorithms.
52:07You know, we are living now in something that can be called the attention economy, where attention,
52:15your attention is the most valuable currency to pay for anything. And everyone wants some of your
52:21attention. So in order to get your attention, in journalism, we use the term hook. It's like you need to
52:27have
52:28some hook to get people's attention and then to try to get them to watch or read your content to
52:34the end.
52:34So you need to have that entry point into people's minds. And if you start with something that they
52:40don't know, they would quickly dismiss it. You know, most people would just dismiss it. If you just start
52:46with simply denying what they already know or dismissing it, they will just, I'm not interested in it.
52:53But if you start with something they already know, like a stereotype or a nostalgic feeling,
52:58it would work as a hook. So you have to hook them and then you can give them more context
53:05and more
53:05information. So it's an important part of the media strategy to tell the audience some percentage of
53:13the information that they already know. Because if 100% of information that you will be given
53:19to the audience will be new, they won't bite it. They won't like it.
53:24That's why if you present like GDP figures to someone who's convinced that you're doing cultural
53:29genocide in Tibet, they wouldn't even look at the numbers because it's so outside.
53:32Don't throw numbers in people. Don't throw bridges at people. Give them some ground for
53:38them to emotionally connect. Give them some ground to reminisce it, to remember something that they
53:44already knew. And then you have to build on that.
53:46Because I also think it says a lot about what people, and I'll speak specifically for Western
53:52audiences. I have had to study what Western audiences like because, you know, I'm a Westernized
53:58person and I also grew up seeing all of that, understanding it and now trying to combat it.
54:04And I think seeing what Western audiences like is very interesting because it comes from this
54:09projection of what is missing in maybe their own lives or their own societies.
54:13So I, you know, I think local Chinese people, again, there's maybe a gap of understanding where
54:21maybe local Chinese people don't understand why the guang changwu, the square dancing, the public
54:27square dancing, moves foreigners so much. But it does. Most viral videos I see, at least on like
54:34American or Australian TikTok and Instagram, it's just people marveling at the fact that like
54:40hundreds of aunties and uncles are dancing in a public square every night, you know, like they
54:45can't believe it. And the comments are not just about, wow, China's amazing, of course, but it's also
54:50the elders in our country are just in their bedrooms alone. The elders in our country are just left
54:58behind and discarded and thrown into old folks' homes. So it also shows what people are yearning for
55:04at home. And I think it's really interesting to understand that, you know, and I think that's
55:09maybe where the cultural gap is, because I think maybe some Chinese media, they, you know, they might
55:14know all the geopolitics and they might know what's happening, but they might still be thinking, oh,
55:18but Americans live way better than us. But that's actually not the case, you know. And so I think that
55:23is that the gap just needs to be closed and closed. And I think we're making big strides.
55:28Yeah, not only have to know the conclusions that your intended audience are making, but also how
55:34they feel and they see the evidence that you're presenting. Yeah, because to us, it might be the
55:38most ordinary thing in the world, but it's pretty extraordinary in the West to see people with that
55:45sense of community, people with that sense of belonging, so actively involved, because that doesn't
55:51really exist that much in the West. You already have that Chinese awesome hook
55:57for greater audience. Now you have to build on that and get the audience to understand China better.
56:04I'm not a China expert, but I hope that I'm gradually becoming more knowledgeable. And I like
56:11that process, you know, learning more about Chinese society, because my perception of China was also guided
56:18by so many stereotypes, both Russian and Western, before I came here, before I started working for
56:23RD China, before I met extremely smart Chinese people, extremely cultural, educated, and open to new
56:32perspectives. And I'm so happy to be here. And, you know, for me, this journey is a journey of my
56:39lifetime.
56:39You know, I am enjoying it so much. Thank you so much, Siva, for coming on this episode.
56:44And we hope you all enjoyed this episode of Roughly Chinese. Please tune in to many more and like,
56:51comment and subscribe. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye bye. Thank you.
57:09And this was another episode of China Now, a show that opens the window to the present
57:14and future of the Asian giant. Hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.
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