Though it hasn’t been authenticated, there seems to be good reason to believe this set of guidelines for Xinhua reporters is the real thing. Sample:
1. Physically handicapped persons should not be described by denigrating terms such as “cripple æ®‹åºŸäºº”, “one-eyed dragon ç‹¬çœ¼é¾™”, “blindie çžŽå”, “deafie è‹å”, “fool å‚»å”, “idiot å‘†å”. Instead, the appropriate terms are “handicapped person æ®‹ç–¾äºº”, “blind person ç›²äºº “, “deaf person è‹äºº”, “mentally impaired person æ™ºåŠ›éšœç¢è€…”.
Many other examples can be found in the post, whose author notes:
Aside from the rather predictable rules about Taiwan, it’s interesting that most of the list resembles a guide to Western style political correctness rather than the usual Communist Party list of taboo words and subject matter.
I ‘m not sure about the comparison to Western-style political correctness. Having worked at two big American media companies, I know there are plenty of rules to keep stories politically correct. But to refer to a deaf person as “deafie” or a retarded person as “idiot” is not politically incorrect, it’s vulgar and cruel and crude – at least in American English. Political correctness, to me, is much more inane and difficult to defend, like insisting you refer to black as “people of color” and to garbage men as “sanitation technicians.” These Xinhua guidelines are not inane or absurd or extraordinary. What is extraordinary is that Xinhua needed to create a formal document articulating what you’d hope would be obvious already to their professional journalists.
Something may have been lost in translation, however. Maybe in Chinese, the term translated into “deafie” isn’t as offensive as it sounds in English. When I was in Hong Kong, I’d see a small bus every morning carrying retarded people, who were referred to on the side of the bus, in English, as “spastics” – in HK, apparently, the word “spastic” doesn’t have the negative connotations it does in the US. If the words in the Xinhua guidelines are indeed as offensive as their English co-equivalents, then again I’d have to wonder why Xinhua would ever need to create such a document. Can their reporters really be so poorly trained that they’d use the equivalent of “deafie” in a Xinhua story? Or is è‹å less harsh in Chinese?
Richard Burger is the author of Behind the Red Door: Sex in China, an exploration of China's sexual revolution and its clash with traditional Chinese values.