When official sources fail, good journalists shine. One of the best was the BBC’s Anthony Lawrence, who died in Hong Kong in September 2013 at the venerable age of 101. One of his greatest stories is an example of how news, like desperate people fleeing horrific situations, has a way of getting out.
Anthony Lawrence was the BBC’s Asia correspondent for 50 years. For much of that time China was closed to the outside world and foreign correspondents like Lawrence used often imaginative means to find out what was going on behind the Bamboo Curtain.
It’s not that information wasn’t pouring out of the country, it was. It’s just that it was a bit, shall we say, selective.
The world didn’t read about China’s Great Famine from the glossy, gleaming pages of China Reconstructs magazine or from bulletins issued by the New China News Agency, as Xinhua was known in those days.
Instead, China watchers like Lawrence had to piece together fragments of rumour and individual testimony and find sometimes ingenious ways to verify them.
Lawrence famously verified reports of the Great Famine by going down to the post office
Lawrence famously verified reports of China’s horrific famine, which began in the late 1950s, by the simple expedient of asking the post office how many food parcels were being sent by Hong Kong people to the People’s Republic.
The border was always officially tightly controlled and unofficially highly porous, which made Hong Kong so invaluable to interested journalists and foreign spies.
Throughout my childhood people were escaping to Hong Kong from the horror across the border. Many came by sea. We’ll never know how many people attempted the short, dangerous journey across Deep Bay which separated Hong Kong from the mainland.
If they made it past the gunboats there were still the sharks to contend with
They were the freedom swimmers and they were called illegal immigrants too, just like today’s refugees.
And, just like today’s refugees, they were willing to risk everything, including their lives, for the chance of freedom and a better life.
Deep Bay is about four miles long and is not really deep. It wasn’t a long swim but if they didn’t get shredded by the razor-sharp oyster beds and made it past the gunboats there were still the sharks to contend with.
One young woman lost her leg in a shark attack but made it to Hong Kong and was interviewed from her hospital bed by the local newspapers. Her four companions were not so lucky. They disappeared in the swirling melee and were not seen again.
Her story jarred with what I knew about China, gleaned from Cultural Revolution stories of heroic peasants and the smiling front covers of China Reconstructs which littered our flat in Macdonnell Road.
An edition of China Reconstructs from January 1957
Why would you risk getting eaten by sharks when hitting record steel production targets looked like such a buzz?
Mostly though, the freedom swimmers did not make the news. If they were unlucky they disappeared into the dark waters of Deep Bay, unremarked and forever uncounted.
If they were lucky they melted away into the crowded Hong Kong streets, emerging from the shadows at the post office counter to send money or food to their relatives in China and perhaps talk to a curious journalist.
It was that unofficial channel which Lawrence recognised and followed until he came to something approaching the truth.
News has a way of getting out no matter how tightly controlled the official channels.
We need journalists doing what they’ve always done, getting out and talking to people and getting to something approaching the truth
And when official channels are choked, social media is making sure the news gets out like never before. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need good journalists doing what they’ve always done, getting out and talking to people and getting to something approaching the truth.
When Tony Lawrence wrapped up at the BBC in 1974 after half a century of service he stayed in Hong Kong and volunteered to work with the International Social Services, an organisation which assists refugees.
In 2002 the ISS opened the Anthony Lawrence Refuge for Newcomers in his honour.
I don’t think his ground-breaking journalism or the humanitarian efforts it inspired would have occurred if he’d been content to wait for the official press releases or to whinge about being left off ‘the drip.’
There’s a story breaking on the world’s shores. It will continue to break as long as getting torn apart by sharks, drowning at sea or rotting forgotten in one of the detention centres of our making seems a better prospect than the horrors left behind.
News, like desperate people, gets out. Good journalists are part of that. The rest is just propaganda.
© Maria Spackman 2013
Further reading:
Obituaries of Anthony Lawrence from:
Tony Lawrence and his beloved wife Irmgard – whom he affectionately called ‘The Enemy’ – were our neighbours in Hong Kong. At the launch of Tony’s book China: The Long March, Irmgard’s jewellery failed her, in a little story told to me by my dad:
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A good read and well said Sally.
Running from commenting- on the tragic events occurring on Australia’s doorstep- under his own watch- is inappropriate. A PM of any worth would naturally express some empathy and some measure of intent to prevent future death. But hey, Shit Happens.
Sally Thank you for great perspective on excellence in journalism. Maybe the torture being inflicted on asylum seekers rather than being normalized, will finally be seen for what it is -inhumane.
Let’s hope so, Robyn. Many thanks for your comment and your kind feedback.