Timeline: ABC marks 40 years of reporting from China (original) (raw)
This month marks 40 years since the ABC opened its first bureau in China, a country that, back then, many Australians knew very little about.
Here are some highlights from the stories covered by the ABC's correspondents, producers and cameramen over the past four decades.
1973
In October ABC Peking, as it was called then, was up and running - or pedalling, thanks to Paul Raffaele, the ABC's first China-based correspondent.
ABC correspondent Paul Raffaele in Peking, now Beijing, 1973. (ABC News)
It might sound funny but I'm beginning to enjoy these morning and afternoon spins down the main street here in Peking. The air is clean, there's no petrol pollution and the doctors tell me it does wonders for the heart.
Raffaele filed his first TV report from the Peking bureau on the use of bicycles as a form of transportation in China.
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Raffaele was not allowed to speak to ordinary Chinese people, but he arrived at a momentous time in the nation's history.
The cultural revolution was ongoing, but Chairman Mao was old and frail, and a power struggle began between the Gang of Four and reformers who wanted modernisation.
China's official news agency released this photo in September 1976 captioned: "Peasants from Peking's outskirts, with boundless profound proletarian feelings, paying respects to the remains of the most esteemed and beloved leader." (AFP)
In 1976, Mao dies and Deng Xiaoping emerges as the dominant figure among pragmatists in the leadership.
Under him, China undertakes far-reaching economic reforms.
It was a massive world story in terms of what was going to happen. You'd either have China now, if the Gang of Four won, they'd still be waving little Mao books and socialism forever and whatever.
Or you would have Deng Xiaoping, to be rich and glorious, and China becomes massively rich.
1989
After an era of unparalleled economic growth, by the late 1980s corruption, cronyism and nepotism produced widespread anger and mass demonstrations.
After a six-week-long protest, tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square in June and the People's Liberation Army opened fire on thousands of pro-democracy students.
The Tiananmen Square crackdown prompted international outrage and led to sanctions. (Reuters: Arthur Tsang)
Fly-in correspondents Max Uechtritz and Peter Cave took cover. The Beijing bureau's Trevor Watson was also in the thick of the brutal crackdown.
At one point there was simply a wall of noise from their heavy machinegun fire. They were firing indiscriminately, bullets were bouncing off the diplomatic compounds in the area and off the hotels in that area also.
1999
Just as Hong Kong did two years before, the territory of Macau reverts to Chinese rule.
This is the first step. Hong Kong has been achieved. Macau is about to be achieved, Taiwan will be the third step.
Of course the situation there is totally different because the first two were handed back by foreign governments after peaceful negotiations.
The fact that Hong Kong and Macau will remain as they are shows our policy of 'one country, two systems' can work.
2003
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) quickly spreads throughout Asia. By April, there were more than 2,500 known cases and 111 deaths from the new disease.
Commuters in Hong Kong wear face masks during the SARS outbreak in 2003. (AFP Photo: Peter Parks)
Chinese authorities were criticised for their handling of the epidemic, as the ABC's China correspondent John Taylor reported at the time.
The SARS outbreak seems to have taken hold around a crucial moment in China's recent political history, the final act in the country's peaceful and ordered leadership transition.
Hu Jintao took over the presidency, and Wen Jiabao the premiership, and a number of new leaders were also appointed.
The timing of the SARS outbreak didn't assist in the proper handling of the outbreak, given China's sensitivity for 'bad news' around nationally important events.
It's unlikely the current top leaders or their immediate predecessors will ever be held responsible for their actions or inactions.
Three months after the outbreak, the epidemic was under control. In June, Taylor reported on the different mood in Beijing.
Much remains a mystery about SARS. There is no vaccine, no cure, and no robust diagnostic test. While the first SARS victim was identified in southern China last year, scientists don't know where for certain the SARS virus came from.
For the people of China though, that matters little. What counts is that the outbreak appears to have been beaten, and they need not be afraid.
2008
China lifts restrictions on foreign reporting so that correspondents could travel freely outside Beijing, except to Tibet.
The country's most devastating earthquake in three decades kills nearly 10,000 people in western Sichuan province and destroys 80 per cent of the buildings in one county.
Chinese soldiers walk through Yingxiu in China's south-western province of Sichuan on May 30, 2008. (AFP Photo: Teh Eng Koon)
ABC correspondent Stephen McDonell and the Beijing team won a Logie and a Walkley Award for their coverage of the earthquake.
We're trying to make it to the earthquake's epicentre at Yingxiu in Wenchuan county. As we head further along the beautiful creeks and forests start giving way to mountains of rubble.
With the road still down and foreign journalists being prevented from entering, this is one of the few ways in.
We've just walked seven hours to get through that valley. We've had to climb through countless landslides, there are no roads or paths to speak of. When we get up here there's a bit of a foul smell actually.
It's a bit like the smell of death. It probably is the smell of death.
Fireworks explode over Beijing's Olympic stadium, which was dubbed the 'bird's nest'. (Reuters: Jason Lee)
During the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics, ABC News had a team of 22 staff covering the Games. They contributed to daily reports on TV, radio and online.
Many Chinese people view their country differently because of the Olympic Games; they may even think of their government in a more positive light because it landed the greatest show on earth and managed to pull it off.
2012
Every 10 years Beijing changes its top leaders, with the Communist Party holding its Congress.
In November, the seven-day event at the Great Hall of the People settles on a leadership team that will lead the country for the next decade.
Xi Jinping becomes the Communist Party's new general secretary, taking over from president Hu Jintao, and Li Keqiang becomes prime minister.
We were in there waiting for quite a long time... so there was a lot of anticipation, and then the new team arrived and pretty much as expected, it was those who had been predicted to step up to the politburo standing committee.
In general you would say they are probably people who are more close to the former leader, rather than to Hu Jintao.
Maybe that's a sign that Xi Jinping is going to be quite a strong leader in a way because he's also in that same faction, which is the way people describe things.
2013
A powerful earthquake kills more than 160 people in the same area where thousands were reported dead following the 2008 quake.
Zhangmei is currently sleeping under the stars with her husband, two children and father-in-law. The five of them squash onto one double bed next to their collapsed house.
'We're not thinking about the future now,' she tells us, and as she speaks the ground starts to shake as another aftershock hits.
She warns us that the bricks could fall down from a collapsed house next door. 'It's just not safe,' she says.