Skip to main content

China summons CNN Beijing bureau chief

  • Story Highlights
  • China says CNN has not adequately apologized for pundit's comment
  • Commentator Jack Cafferty referred to the Chinese as "goons and thugs"
  • China: Comments reflect arrogance, ignorance and hostility to Chinese people
  • Next Article in World »
Decrease font Decrease font
Enlarge font Enlarge font

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Thursday that CNN has not done enough to ease its concerns over a commentator who referred to the Chinese as "goons and thugs" and said products manufactured in China are "junk."

China's foreign ministry complained after CNN commentator Jack Cafferty made the remarks on April 9.

The Foreign Ministry lodged a protest with CNN's bureau in Beijing on Wednesday evening and said a CNN statement, issued Tuesday, failed to adequately apologize for commentator Jack Cafferty's remarks, according to a report Thursday in the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The network's bureau chief in Beijing, Jaime FlorCruz, said he was summoned on Wednesday evening to meet with Liu Jianchao, the senior Foreign Ministry spokesman. He said the spokesman told him that the ministry did not view CNN's statement about the comments as an apology.

Cafferty made the remarks in question on April 9, as CNN host Wolf Blitzer was comparing today's China to that of 20 or 30 years ago.

"I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different," Cafferty said. "We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper.

"We are also running hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart.

"So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed," he said. "I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."

He issued a clarification of his remarks Monday, saying that by "goons and thugs," he meant the Chinese government, not the Chinese people.

A CNN statement issued Tuesday said "It was not Mr. Cafferty's, nor CNN's intent to cause offense to the Chinese people, and (CNN) would apologize to anyone who has interpreted the comments in this way."

The network said Cafferty was offering his "strongly held" opinion of the Chinese government, not China's people. It also noted that "over many years, Jack Cafferty has expressed critical comments on many governments, including the U.S. government and its leaders."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized Cafferty's comments this week.

"Cafferty used the microphone in his hands to slander China and the Chinese people (and) seriously violated professional ethics of journalism and human conscience," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Tuesday at a news conference, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.

She said Cafferty's remarks "reflected his arrogance, ignorance and hostility towards the Chinese people, ignited indignation of Chinese (at) home and abroad and will be condemned by those who safeguard justice around the world."

In the days following his remarks, however, the Legal Immigrant Association launched an online petition condemning his statements as "racist" and "despicable" and demanding that CNN discipline Cafferty and apologize to the Chinese people. Nearly 45,000 people had signed it as of Tuesday afternoon.

In the petition, the LIA describes itself as "a leading organization of legal immigrants mainly comprised of people from China." According to its Web site, the nonprofit group is based in Santa Clara, California, and was founded in 2007 as an organization "dedicated to the social well-being of employment-based immigrant professionals."

The state-run English-language newspaper China Daily also said in an editorial Tuesday that an apology is called for, calling Cafferty "pathetic" and noting, "it is rare for the world audience to hear such a blatant discrimination against an ethnic group of people with such a derogatory connotation."

Others angered by Cafferty's remarks were urging a boycott of CNN's advertisers.

In its statement, CNN said it is "a network that reports the news in an objective and balanced fashion. However, as part of our coverage we also employ commentators who provide robust opinions that generate debate." E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

  • E-mail
  • Save
  • Print