"News" from China

At 5 Sharp Street West, in the heart of Hong Kong, stands a handsome new eight-story building, with its grilled entrance locked round the clock. Not even the postman with registered mail gets past the portal guards unquestioned. The 40 inmates who work, eat, sleep, exercise and even procreate inside cannot leave without passing the muster of the sentinels. The roof bristles with six radio antennas, attentively tuned to Peking. This is the Hong Kong bureau of Hsinhua, or New China News Agency--the key link in the communications chain that is the West's only steady source of news from Communist China.

On the Line. In the 22 years since it was born in the caves of Yenan, Hsinhua has grown into a formidable propaganda machine. Its radio-teletype network throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America gets regular transmissions from Peking. It has 31 bureaus in Red China; outside, in addition to the big Hong Kong office, it staffs bureaus in most Western European capitals, in Moscow, Damascus, New Delhi, Baghdad, Cairo, Havana--an estimated 30 in all.

What Hsinhua beams to the free world is carefully audited by Western newsmen because there is so much interest in Red China and so few ways to get the news.* Hsinhua correspondents, using the arts of Western journalism, often send out crisp, brief, seemingly impartial stories, but the party line is never missing: SALT PRODUCTION UP IN CHINA, headlined the Iraq Times, a Hsinhua user, over a recent dispatch. Often the line is tweezered in with surgical care. During President Eisenhower's late-summer tour of Europe, Hsinhua accounts sounded impersonal, but emphasized policy conflicts among the NATO allies: "The appearance of Eisenhower and Macmillan on TV was meant to be a show of 'cordiality' and 'solidarity' . . . yet even in such a public performance, Macmillan spoke at the beginning of the broadcast of the 'differences' between the U.S.A. and Britain." At times Hsinhua plays another role: correspondents in Cambodia send home to Red China flattering stories about the country, which are gratefully reprinted in the Cambodian press--with full credit to Peking.

In Hsinhuaese. Currently embarked on an ambitious expansion program, Hsinhua is concentrating its greatest effort among the nations wravering between East and West. Purveying its free service, not only to the press but to government departments, foreign embassies, important business firms and even individuals, Hsinhua is making a hard pitch in the struggle for the allegiance of undecided nations.

Last week, on the eve of the anniversary celebrations on the mainland (see FOREIGN NEWS), Hsinhua's Hong Kong bureau even tried a capitalistic-style venture into public relations. Staffers made one of their rare appearances outside the building on Sharp Street, played host to some 480 guests (non-Western journalists, diplomats, college professors) at a beer, wine and nibbles reception at the Gloucester Hotel. Asked how many Hsinhua staffers there are in Hong Kong, one replied in good Hsinhuaese: "Oh, we have several journalists."

* Only two newsmen based in Peking--one from Britain's Reuters and one from Agence France Presse--represent the free world's press. They may not leave Peking or send a single line without the approval of the government. Last week Correspondent Frederick Nossal of the Toronto Globe and Mail, which has long been friendly toward Red China, was en route to Peking to establish the free press's first newspaper bureau in Red China's capital.

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