Two days ago I mentioned the venerable and Onion-esque Chinese media practice of featuring various "beautiful journalists" who are covering the big-deal political conferences underway now in Beijing. A sample from this year's installment in People's Daily:
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My friend Adam Minter -- of Shanghai Scrap, Bloomberg, and the forthcoming Junkyard Planet -- reminds me that I have been away from China long enough that my BS-detector instincts have atrophied. He writes:
Of course he's right. I'll have to get back in the game.![]()
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My friend Adam Minter -- of Shanghai Scrap, Bloomberg, and the forthcoming Junkyard Planet -- reminds me that I have been away from China long enough that my BS-detector instincts have atrophied. He writes:
In regard to the People's Daily slideshow with the seven images of the lone "beautiful" journo - I'd bet a couple of rounds that it's a paid placement, designed to boost her career prospects (note how the images are mostly posed). No need to include her name - the right people will know who she is.This is pretty common stuff these days. Alternatively, there's the very real possibility that a paramour might have paid to have these placed as a sort of flattering gift. That's not without precedent - recall that during Obama's first China trip in 2009 there was a big online kerfuffle over the identity of a very attractive young woman [JF: gif at right] seated behind him during his q&a with students. Later turned out that a wealthy boyfriend arranged for her to be seated there, and paid off some photogs [more than $15,000 at current rates, > $12,500 at the time] to get good images that would be published in Chinese media. Pretty standard stuff, and I'm guessing something similar is happening with this slide show, and many similar on PD.
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