China's Patchy Tibet Blackout

DHARMSALA, India Tibetan nuns living in exile join in one of many pro-Tibet rallies abroad that have gone unreported by China's news media. (By Gurinder Osan -- Associated Press)

Those who want more information -- and who have the means -- have learned to seek outside reporting on the Internet or to watch the news on Phoenix TV, a Hong Kong-based satellite station that broadcasts into China in Mandarin. Phoenix news programs have traditionally maneuvered between Hong Kong's free press atmosphere and the realities of Beijing's power over the owners. The result has been broadcasts that skirt the most sensitive issues but report more thoroughly than mainland television.

"We saw it all on Phoenix TV, burned shops and everything," said a retired hospital director whose Beijing home has cable service on a limited basis and who, like others questioned about censorship, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Despite the party's strictures at home, reporting from abroad filtered into China swiftly. Broadcasts by CNN and the BBC, available in hotels and in apartment complexes housing foreigners, were cut off only sporadically by Chinese authorities, including a news conference by the Dalai Lama on Sunday from Dharmsala, India.

By Monday, in the face of the crescendo of news from abroad over the weekend, the party had changed tactics and gone on the offensive.

Champa Phuntsok, the Tibetan regional governor, was flown to Beijing to meet with reporters in a hastily organized news conference. He blamed the Dalai Lama for the outburst and urged those who had committed arson and pillaging to turn themselves in.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao held a second news conference Monday evening, using identical language to excoriate the Dalai Lama and reiterate that the issue was not Tibetan human rights and freedom of expression but Chinese territorial sovereignty.

Newspapers were authorized to report on the comments by Champa Phuntsok and Liu, and the official Central China Television began broadcasting images of the damage, with emphasis on the injuries to Han Chinese and the damage to their businesses. By Thursday, Chinese state media were reporting that protests had spread to provinces beyond Tibet.

Resorting again to what appeared to be coordinated language by Beijing officials stepping up to the cameras, Premier Wen Jiabao pressed the offensive Tuesday in his annual news conference at the close of the National People's Congress's two-week session. "They wanted to incite the sabotage of the Olympic Games to achieve their unspeakable goal," he said of the rioters.

Asked by a foreign correspondent why journalists were not allowed to travel to Tibet to cover what was happening, Wen assured his questioner that everything was returning to normal and suggested that, soon, the government would organize a reporting trip for correspondents.