Mike Chinoy of CNN was the correspondent in Beijing for many years. His China experiences have given him some memorable experiences on a personal as well as professional basis. Mike shares with us here all the exciting adventures he has had while he was in China leading up the Tianemen incident.
WHEN you are as absorbed in and fascinated with a particular country as
Mike Chinoy was (and probably still is), you will have to satisfy that
obsession by being there. Chinoy of CNN did just that.
His love affair with China began in 1973, when he made his first trip
there. But it wasn't until 1987 that he was tasked with setting up CNN's
bureau in Beijing, which he eventually left in 1995 after suffering bouts
of disillusionment with political systems and leaders. Also, by that time,
he felt he had had enough.
So, all in all, he didn't spend 20 years in China despite the sub-title
of his book. Before his stint in Beijing, which lasted eight years, he was
based in London for four and a half years, covering everything from coups
to revolutions and wars in various parts of the world.
As a broadcast journalist, Chinoy was often thrust into different,
occasionally dangerous, situations, and he has great stories to show for
it. But it was in China that he earned his journalistic badge of honour
for being the man who brought the reality of the Tiananmen massacre to the
living rooms of millions across the world, and indirectly helped stamp the
mark of CNN via satellite communication.
Chinoy admits at the outset that "in this book, I have not tried to
write a definitive history of CNN or an indepth study of post-Mao China.
Rather, I have sought to convey what it was like, professionally,
intellectually and, equally important, personally to witness events I
covered around the world."
Chinoy's story begins one hot August day in Hong Kong, when he stepped
off a boat en route to China. At that time, he was just another young
American stumbling into the 1970s after the heady '60s, holding
precariously to the belief that China as a Communist nation had some of
the answers that the US could be looking for.
His fascination with things Chinese led him to pursue a course in
Mandarin. He mastered elementary Chinese and graduated to serviceable
Mandarin, which he found immensely useful in his work in Beijing.
Honesty is part of Chinoy's character armoury. Unlike other Western
journalists who have worked in the Far East, he does not hide the fact
that he roamed and enjoyed the shady and seedier side of the Asian region.
He talks openly of sleazy joints in Manila and naked go-go dancers.
There are hilarious tales coming out of these excursions. Like the time
when he and his colleagues were enjoying a live striptease act by two
attractive young women. A technician accidentally hit the wrong switch and
the event was broadcast `live' across America via CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN.
In typically candid fashion, Chinoy tells briefly of some failed
relationships he had in the East and the circumstances which did not
permit them to germinate to full flower.
However, he is quick to add: "For my part, I discovered that the
inevitable sexual temptations of life on the road, to which many
colleagues regularly succumbed, held little appeal for me." That was after
he had met his life partner, Lynne.
Chinoy's career is as exciting as it is life-threatening. He has rubbed
shoulders with the likes of Deng Xiaoping and the Dalai Lama. He covered
both the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, and the
Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia in 1989.
He took some photographs with the Mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan in
1981 and broke the news to the world when the US Embassy was blown to
pieces in Beirut in 1983. And he witnessed the People Power Revolution in
the Philippines in 1986.
He has interviewed Kim Il Sung, Billy Graham and IRA terrorists, to name
a few. He also encountered Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, whom he strongly
suspected of wearing make-up and perfume.
Chinoy's narration of world-shaking events reads like short bursts, very
much like gunfire from an AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle in Beirut's
war-torn streets.
It would be grossly unfair to compare his work with other newsmen who
have written accounts of similar experiences, simply because Chinoy's
accounts are from a man who have seen the action, filmed it and broadcast
it. It is a first-person account of a hardcore reporter who flirted with
projectiles whistling past his head while performing his duty on the
field.
If the reader is expecting a detailed report on how CNN spread its
tentacles in Asia, banish the thought. There are only a few passing
references to the `Chicken Noodle News', a tag CNN carried when Chinoy
joined the organisation in 1983.
Chinoy does not ponder too deeply about issues. Rightly so. Most of the
time he wasn't there to do an in-depth feature. His job was to tell the
story as the events tell them, and leave the rest to his audience.
China Live is an interesting mirror with many facets, and Chinoy is
without doubt a dedicated China-watcher. Currently CNN's bureau chief in
Hong Kong, he has yet to get China out of his system. Having been there
and seen it at close quarters, he sums it up thus: "From a nation of
certainties, China now seemed to me a country of paradoxes, which could
not be reduced either to the ideological simplicities of my youth or the
journalistic simplicities that so often characterised foreign reporting
from Beijing. There are so many questions."
China Live is a commendable effors at telling it like it is.
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