THE CHINA READER

In a stunning site, the hotel adjacent to the newly-built CCTV tower in Beijing was completely destroyed after a raging fire burned unabated the night before. The fire, reportedly caused by fireworks gone astray during a ceremonial pyrotechnics display celebrating the final day of the lunar year, destroyed one of Beijing’s most eye-catching and modern architectural accomplishments - The Mandarin Oriental Hotel - located adjacent to CCTV’s futuristic-looking headquarters, both built by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Chinese Central Television issued an apology, saying in a statement posted on its web site that the network apologized for the incident and was deeply sorry for the “severe damage the fire caused to the country’s property.”

Blame for the incident has been placed on China Central Television, whose employees apparently defied regulations and staged their pyrotechnics display too close to the unfinished building. One firefighter died and six others were injured fighting the blaze.

The Chinese government has moved fast to staunch any reporting of the incident. By morning the next day there were no pictures on the front page of China’s major newspapers. Besides a brief report of a “fire” from Xinhua and CCTV, reports on the incident were eerily non-existent. The evening news that night did not mention the story.

Soon after the fire, the chat forums were abuzz with citizen reports of the “CCTV building on fire”. Pictures and videos flooded cyberspace but no news of the incident was reported on any of China’s major news channels. Later on that evening a leaked declaration from Chinese authorities made it on the internet:

Translation: “No photos, no video clips, no in-depth reports… All media outlets must only use Xinhua dispatches. The news should be put on news areas only and the comments posting areas should be closed.”

For more on Chinese netizen reaction to the fire and subsequent media censorship, check out ChinaSmack’s post here and here.

Posted on February 10th, 2009 under Internet Freedom, Natural Disasters • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback