During a joint session held at MNA headquarters on Jan. 01, Mohammad Mehdi Rahimi described the experiences and findings of the “Hi Jiangsu” trip for MNA and Tehran Times journalists and correspondents.
Rahimi says the Chinese organized the trip to exert their “cultural and media influence” on other media outlets.
He believes that “China wants to become a superpower in all sectors.”
He further said, the trip, which has been held annually since 2015, aimed to introduce China’s potentials and capacities of in different sectors including culture, economy and tourism.
According to him, the trip covered stories about local culture, tourism, economy, and technology development by visiting different agricultural, and industrial units including a smart manufacturing industrial park, among other sites. Journalists even joined a livestreamed online shopping program at a local farmer’s plantation to see the growing development of small and medium enterprise e-commerce in China.
He noted that such trip would serve china to a great extent since each journalist attending the trip would potentially become a link introducing China’s capacities to their own country.
“The trip would finally benefit china and Jiangsu trip,” he said.
Rahimi pointed to the initial steps taken by Chinese officials for familiarizing guests with the plans as well as carrying out necessary coordination for a media tour and said, “about 40 days before the beginning of the tour, organizers of the tour provided us with the plans and details of the tour. After the passage of about 20 days, they [organizers of the tour] sent a second program to us which was slightly modified, so that they informed us of these changes precisely.”
The organizers also told us in a message that exact scheduled program of the tour would be announced on the first day of the trip, he said, adding, “they also asked us to let them know about the specific suggestions regarding appropriate timetables for the flights, etc., so that every detail of flights would be planned according to these considerations.”
He drew a comparison between the programs and conferences organized in Iran and in this country i.e. China and said, “in Iran, sometimes, conferences and seminars are not organized in scheduled date and in some cases, guests of these conferences are not specified until few days remained for organizing the conference.”
In general, there are some irregularities and indiscipline in organizing conferences and seminars in Iran, he criticized.
Rahimi went on to say about his trip to China and said, “before heading to China, I proposed tour organizers in China to provide ‘halal food’ for Iranian guests visiting this country. since Chinese people eat a variety of food in their country, I told them to provide ‘halal food’ for visiting Iranian media delegation. It should be noted that ‘halal food’ in China is called ‘Mosulmancheh’.
The trip programs that had been prepared by Chinese officials for us were ‘very intensive’, he said, adding, “in our six-day stay in China, we could visit five cities of this province in China. Sometimes, we had to visit seven or eight centers or institutes in this this province in a day.”
It seemed that priority of organizers of the tour was to see all regions as predefined in conductor according to our scheduled program even though the quality of these visits was not much more important for them, he reiterated.
Referring to our arrival in China through Urumqi airport, he added "this city is the capital of the Muslim province of Xinjiang. It is noteworthy that there is almost no sign that represented the presence of Islam and Muslims in the province; for example, there was not even one single praying room at the airport. On the contrary, there were a lot of security checkpoints there because the Chinese government considers the province to be a place for activity of some terrorist groups.”
Pointing to the opening ceremony of the media tour, Rahimi said “the opening ceremony was held with the participation of the Governor of Jiangsu Province, some other provincial officials, the undersecretary of the newspaper "China Daily", the representative of the Chinese Communist Party etc.. And an interesting point about that ceremony was that all of these officials spoke for less than 5 minutes, while the transcripts of their speeches had been translated into English and were read out by a translator simultaneously, so that the content of the speeches would be understood by everyone. The whole opening ceremony lasted less than 60 minutes, and this could give good tips to us about the opening and closing ceremonies of our conferences and programs.”
Rahimi, then outlined plans for visits to various regions and centers of China, including centers such as the Jiangsu Province's old museum, where a section for children was; the Genetic Research Center which had been built in collaboration with German experts and scientists and they did not shy away from praising using the science and technology of the Germans; the very large flowers and houseplants centers which would export their crops; local festivals in which the Chinese youth appeared to have played no significant role; the bamboo forests that as the Chinese people say they are the largest in the world; nursing and care centers for the elderly which looked like our kindergarten, which are run by charities.
Rahimi also pointed to the cultural and collective aspects of the Chinese lifestyle, explaining "there, like Iran, we encounter the "best” culture. For example, wherever centers or regions they took us, they would say that this is the first example or the largest or best example in the whole of China or the whole world and so on. It seemed to me that this is a universal culture, because when we were on a trip to East Africa, talking of the first, or the best and the greatest was stressed as well, as it is the same in Iran.”
Saying that the museums in China are very busy and attract a lot of visitors, he added "the majority of visitors are the Chinese themselves, not necessarily tourists who come to China, which indicates their interest in their own culture and history."
Chinese people have a great teamwork; for instance, a simple interview was conducted by team - one recorded the voice, the other went for taking photos, and one another wrote down what was being said. Even it seemed that two newcomers are there two learn the basics about interviews.
Touching upon Chinese lifestyle, Rahimi described their sleeping and eating habits 'interesting'. Dinner and launch was served at a predetermined timetable and by 8:30 pm all the city was practically sleeping. This timing may be one the main elements of their success, he added.
He went on to stress the presence of elderly people in their society, adding that on the other hand, few children could be seen. This can be linked to the population policies of China during recent decades, Rahimi said.
Using solar energy was so common among Chinese people as when you take a look at roof of homes you can clearly see systems which are being used to provide the warm water. This measure is just being promoted in Iran as well by Energy Ministry.
Describing Chinese architecture "simple and repetitive", he noted, "its being said that if you visit one city in China, it's as if you have visited all the countries' cities." No significant diversity can be seen in their architecture style, he maintained.
Elsewhere, Rahimi said that one of the evident and interesting points in the streets was the presence of motorcycles and bicycles. In all streets and even tunnels, there were exclusive lines for motorcycles and bicycles, which eases the transportation.
Rahimi said infrastructure in China has developed on a balanced scale, and is on par with Western developed countries.
He then maintained that there were many CCTV cameras installed across the city, even inside buses.
“They have everything under control by blocking social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and messaging apps like Telegram. On the other hand, they have developed their own domestic messaging app ‘Wechat’ which is very popular and meets the major needs of the people,” he added.
Rahimi also said the province is home to very few Muslims and he had seen no mosques along the way. The number of halal restaurants were also few and far between.
“China has succeeded in taking over the world’s economy in recent decades, and the US’ most pressing issue at the moment is how to establish a trade link with China,” he said, adding that China has not made much progress in the cultural sphere, however.
Rahimi added that China is now basically known only as an economic power, but the Chinese have come to the conclusion that in order to become an effective superpower in the international arena, they need to be influential in different fields; for this purpose, they have arranged media tours aimed at cultural and media influence.
At the end of the meeting, deputy head of the Mehr News Agency, who was present as a quality observer at the meeting, briefly outlined the differences and distinctions of the Chinese community with Iranian society, and said “the first point is that Iran has a state of a "Crossroads" and has been the route for many people and cultures, but China has a state of a "deadlock" in where there is no ethnic and cultural diversity that we see in Iran.
He added that such a distinction makes people in China very similar to each other. In fact we see a unified society in China, in which the spirit of participation and collective work is extremely high, just the opposite in Iran, where cultural, collaborative and collective work is rare, due to these multiplicity and ethnic diversity.
On the other hand, Dehghani added, the unified society in China has created a good opportunity for hierarchical work and has encouraged being respectful towards upper hands; however in Iran, we face an unyielding and rebellious spirit unable to respect the upper hands.
Stating that the Chinese have been trying to pull themselves out of this “deadlock” in recent years, Dehghani added “their key problem is their language, which limits the possibility of their active engagement with the world."
Our language is fundamentally similar to that of Westerners and Arabs; however Chinese is not the same and this severely limits the possibility of communication.
"They have a very rich culture, but when they want to introduce their own developmental symbols, they show off their westernized luxury symbols," he said, pointing out that the Chinese have tended to become heavily westernized in recent decades.
Translated by Mehr News English Desk
MNA/4501823