Plane silly…

A 60-word report detailing the basic facts in the state-owned Beijing Daily was the only official statement China published at the time of the crash, which happened just a few kilometres from Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The collision left holes on the side of the 109-storey CITIC Tower, which have since been boarded up, and dramatic footage of the incident has been scrubbed off the internet.

The Chinese people themselves know little about what took place, and staff in the building, which is known as ‘China Zun’ after a Bronze Age jug that inspired its design, were told not to talk to anyone about the incident.

At least three aviation firms said they were told to suspend light aircraft operations, but they declined to elaborate, saying they had been instructed not to discuss it.

Later we heard from official state sources that the pilot was suffering from “chronic insomnia and anxiety” committing the terrible action for “personal reasons”.

He apparently was a divorced man who lived alone, the Chaoyang district government said in a statement, adding that his diary contained “multiple expressions of ending his life”.

“The comprehensive investigation concluded that this was a case of endangering public safety caused by personal reasons”, the statement said.

But how far do we believe this, because without a free media (like The Eye) to scrutinise this comment, and bring out the facts, WE SIMPLY DON’T KNOW?!

China is no stranger to censorship.

When The Economist visited the site of a market at Fangshan where a construction vehicle had crashed, it was surrounded by dozens of police officers and local volunteers wearing the red armbands typical of CCP members.

A vehicle from China’s SWAT police was parked nearby, and when asked, a police officer refused to confirm that anything had happened at all.

But he did say that IF there had been an attack, mental illness would probably have been to blame (as in the aeroplane incident), and the perpetrator would no doubt be in custody. because “China’s police are very effective”.

Direct criticism of the party, the country’s leaders, or the government itself is banned, and any discussions that are deemed to have political implications, or touch upon sensitive issues quickly disappear, although this time it appears that the authorities went much further.

Photographs and memes of the skyscraper, which are unrelated to what happened, were removed from Chinese social media platforms.

The censorship machinery kicked in so quickly and thoroughly this time possibly because Beijing’s leadership is “still not exactly sure what happened”, says Manya Koetse, who runs the Eye on Digital China newsletter.

Beijing also recently tightened regulations on drones, citing security concerns – drones now have to be registered before they can be brought in and out of the capital.

Chong Ja Ian, a non-resident scholar at Carnegie China, declared: “This is a bit of an embarrassment to the security services responsible for Beijing“.

Perhaps because of this embarrassment, China went beyond what it has done in the past.

For example, historically it has blanked out prison camps on online maps, only for diligent researchers to find them again by looking at the empty spaces!

According to Kenneth Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch (HRW), China has become the greatest “threat to the global human-rights system”.

Threat or not, it is clear that the authorities felt that telling the truth about an awful plane crash when it happened, was a very real threat to China…