China issues spur debate

Duke graduate joins Tibet panel

DURHAM -- Scott Savitt is a man divided. He knows firsthand how challenging it is to cover news in China, let alone political flash points, such as the communist country's rule in Tibet.

For 15 years, the Duke graduate, who is now writing his China memoirs, walked that tightrope between what could and could not be said in China -- first as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and later as editor of his own weekly magazine, Beijing Scene. In 2000, he was held in a prison cell for a month before being exiled from China.

Either he had written too explicit a description in a Duke alumni newsletter of scenes he witnessed in China's 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square or his five-year-old magazine with a weekly readership of 100,000 had become too successful, Savitt said.

"'Ren pa chu ming, zhu pa zhuang,' " Savitt recalls his prison interrogators telling him. "A person should fear making a name for himself the way a pig should fear getting fat."

Savitt, 44, apparently didn't take their admonition to heart. He has recently stirred so much debate in cyberspace discussions about Tibet that he was shunned from two local Chinese mailing lists.

So, Savitt turned to other ways to open up dialogue on the subject. He helped Duke's Asian/Pacific Studies Institute invite both Tibetan and Chinese scholars to a public panel discussion to be held Wednesday.

The local Chinese-American Friendship Association, which primarily caters to Triangle residents from mainland China, banned Savitt from its e-mail list recently because, organization leaders said, the group is nonpolitical, and moderators did not want to bombard its members with the flurry of e-mail that followed several of Savitt's posts.

Some people seemed to genuinely appreciate the discussion Savitt provoked.

"This is America, why are we so afraid of talking politics?" wrote Anna Lee, a member of one mailing list.

But on a different list for Chinese students at Duke, a student with an anonymous e-mail address lambasted Savitt: "What a stupid guy! ... Mind your own business! ... Chinese people do not need you [to] tell us the so called truth and ... what we should do!!!?"

Savitt, who has a penchant for spouting Chinese idioms in a Beijing accent, said he wasn't trying to inflame an already emotional debate. And he doesn't want to alienate Chinese friends.

Although Savitt is a Caucasian American, he has spent most of his adult life in China and feels most at ease among Chinese speakers. He shares a rental house near Duke with students, including a Chinese doctorate candidate, and he has many lively discussions with his housemates over vegan meals and oolong tea.

"My Chinese friends call me 'bange zhongguoren' [half-Chinese]," he said. "I take this as the highest compliment possible."

Savitt hopes to return to China someday. A friend in Beijing recently told him he had been taken off a blacklist. If true, Savitt could return to China this summer -- in time for the Olympics.

Savitt said he felt compelled to contribute to the mailing lists on behalf of silent Tibetan students at Duke who fear retaliation against themselves or their families in China if they speak up.

Deep economic disparities remain between Tibetans and Han Chinese who live in that mountainous province, he said, and Tibetans desire greater religious and political autonomy.

As one of the few on the mailing lists who aren't Chinese-American and as a former print journalist who lived and worked in Tibet five times during his career, Savitt felt he could help directly engage Chinese in an exploration of why others might hold views so contrary to their own.

Savitt dislikes the alternatives -- two sides resorting to shouting matches at rallies and always talking past one another. He also felt a need to refute conspiracy theories that Western media reporting on Tibet are intentionally spreading "lies and distorted facts."

To a certain degree, Chinese people have reason to be angry with Western media, he said, adding that he also knows many conscientious Western journalists who work hard to get the facts straight. It doesn't help that China's government limits access to reporters and censors news out of Tibet, he said.

"It makes people outside of China believe the opposite of whatever they say," he said.

Savitt said recent weeks have taught him e-mail is not an ideal way to discuss the nuances of an emotional issue such as Tibet.

"Face to face is better," he said.

That's why he has hope for the panel discussion Wednesday, even though he knows similar panels, such as one held at Columbia University a few weeks ago, have nearly ended in fistfights.

He tries to shrug off the impulse to throw up his hands in frustration.

"Ku xiao bu de," he says.

He doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.