All-too-subtle Government Messages

HAVING lived in the People's Republic of China for the past month, I have been endlessly tickled by the efforts of the central government to bring its messages across.

A statue of former Chairman Mao Zedong is on practically every university campus. In my own school, big gold words "为国家健康工作五十年", translated, "Work healthily for the country for 50 years" run across the exterior of the sports center. All university students are required to take three modules on Mao, Deng and communist leaders.

This sounds all too familiar to Singaporeans, who have been force-fed with information about the stability, ability and incorruptibility of the Singapore government from primary school, all the way to university, whereby undergraduates are required to take at least one Singapore Studies module.

In China, the straw that broke the camel's back for me came in the form of "新闻联播", or "Joint News Broadcast". For half an hour every evening, all the channels on television that would like to show news must show news from the same source, China Central Television. So regardless of what channel you flick to, the news message is the same.

The template is rather standard. The first 10 minutes would cover victories and breakthroughs in China, the second 10 minutes would be an update on Chinese communist leaders and the third 10 minutes would focus on negative stories from other countries.

The governments of China and Singapore are not the only ones who go through great lengths to ensure the right information is passed to their citizens. The Japanese governments rewrote history to make Japan a victim of the second world war. The North Korean government tells its citizens they are living in paradise.

The people of a young and immature society are easily led to believe what their leaders want them to believe. As the society matures, so do the citizens. For how long can governments keep up their all-too-subtle propaganda? It remains to be seen.

You can lie to all of the people some of the time, you can lie to some of the people all of the time, but you cannot lie to all of the people all of the time.

*The writer would like to stress that his minor disagreements with the afore-mentioned governments' methods does not change the fact that he has utmost respect for them.