China shuts doors to overseas media in corridors of power
The CPPCC is cutting off one of the few chances foreign journalists have to talk to top delegates
The annual two sessions might look the same this year, with delegates in flamboyant costumes putting on a show of diversity for state-run TV.
But no women delegates from remote villages, no fur-garbed ethnic minority elites, and no white-collared Catholic priests could hide the fact that the political show is indeed changing – it’s getting much harder to meet the people who really matter.
The country’s top political advisory body, which ends its annual session today, has stopped letting overseas journalists into discussion panels for several key subgroups.
For the first time in recent years, neither subgroups under the ethnic minority sector, nor the only subgroup under religion, was open to overseas media.
They are one of the few chances to speak directly to senior officials but even then they rarely let their guard down.
I once met a retired ethnic Uygur official from Xinjiang , who thundered at length on racial unification in one session only to say afterwards that he had caught a cold and couldn’t comment.