Rumors abound after quake

Beijing considers the tradition of hearsay a threat

Relief tents were set up Saturday after the quake in Sichuan Province, China. Governments everywhere work hard to control the message during disasters. (China Photos/Getty Images)

BEIJING - Almost as soon as the initial aftershocks stopped reverberating last week, the rumors began. Some say that frogs, insects, and other animals fled shortly before the earth shook. Others insist that water mysteriously drained from ponds, or that Beijing knew the massive earthquake would strike but chose not to publicize it with the Olympics so near.

Patently false, perhaps, but enough to alarm the Chinese leadership.

"Stop rumors to avoid social panic and stabilize order," said an earthquake report issued Wednesday by the government of hard-hit Mianyuan County. On the same day, Beijing announced it had punished four people in northern China for spreading rumors about the quake online, without explaining what the punishment was.

Rumors are an integral part of Chinese folk history, songs, and poetry. Last year, authorities drained a reservoir in central Sichuan province to dispel rumors that a growling water beast lived there. In 2006 a rumor spread in Anhui Province that the AIDS virus was being injected into watermelons, which devastated sales.

Chinese emperors long sought to halt the spread across their far-flung empire, with the first recorded anti-hearsay campaign launched by King Li nearly 3,000 years ago, despite a proverb that says, "Trying to stop people's mouths is like trying to stop a flood."

More enlightened rulers sent envoys out to collect rumors as barometers of underlying concerns. But many others, particularly toward the end of dynasties, initiated crackdowns during famines, floods, and unrest.

The recent crackdown on rumors involving the earthquake follows a similar campaign launched in late April following the Tibet uprising, efforts some say amount to trying to stamp out one of the most powerful communication forms in human history.

Governments everywhere work hard to control the message. But this is especially important for a one-party state with limited democracy and a restive population, and fearful that instability could undermine its legitimacy.

Since riots broke out in mid-March in the ethnic Tibetan areas, China has offered a single narrative: that the violence was sparked by a few extremists directed by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader; that Tibet has always been part of China; and that the government has brought enormous economic benefit to a backward population.

With its grip secure over newspapers, television, and the Internet, hearsay represents a major threat to the government's control.

"If people start doubting the official line on particular events, what's to stop them from doubting all sorts of things?" said Joshua Rosenzweig with the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group. "That's something the party wants to avoid."

Particularly worrisome for Beijing is information from the Tibetan "government in exile" in northern India.

Rumor has particular currency in Tibet because illiteracy is high, some say, particularly in rural areas. "It's just mouth to mouth," said Tseten Wangchuk with the Voice of America's Tibetan service. "There's an invisible bubble of language and trust. Once you're inside, you hear all sorts of things."

These range from the plausible to the bizarre, including one a few years ago that a frog the size of a truck had frustrated Chinese engineers trying to build the world's highest railway to Lhasa.

"In a way, it's laughable; in a way, it's sad," Wangchuk said. "It's a means of expressing psychological resentment, [to] get out feelings, in this case that you hate the railway."

Spreading rumors is a crime under anti-subversion sections of China's 1993 State Security Law and lesser provisions outlawing "anti-splittism" or "fabricating or deliberately disseminating false alarmist information."

Arrests on rumor charges followed the 1989 student crackdown in Tiananmen Square and the SARS outbreak in 2003. In April, human rights activist Hu Jia was sentenced to 3 1/2 years for "malicious rumors and committed libel," and this month a man in the eastern province of Jiangsu was jailed for claiming online that he planned to grab the Olympic torch during its relay, which drew protests around the world.

A major conduit for rumors are the many tent communities in post-quake Sichuan or the tea houses in Lhasa.

In the case of Tibet, however, many customers in recent weeks have shunned these establishments, fearing spies.