The media mogul's wife once divided opinion; now she is seen as a role model, writes JONATHAN WATTSin Beijing
WENDI DENG has been hailed as a new national role model in China as images of her leaping to the defence of Rupert Murdoch sizzle across the internet.
Deng’s agile slapdown of the British comedian who threw a foam pie at her husband while he was being questioned by a British parliamentary select committee was the top story on Sina and other leading news portals.
Commentators celebrated her vitality, while state news agencies tried to widen the discomfort of the press baron to the entire western media.
Deng was praised as a “tiger woman” and “Charlie’s Angel”.
“The image of Chinese women just got a lift,” noted a post on the Weibo microblog by Toubenxingfu111.
“This adds value to the image of Chinese wives,” said another under the name Jihua. “They have previously proved their ability to cook and run a business. Now they can add bodyguard.”
Others noted that Deng – a volleyball player in her school days – had not just pied the pie-thrower, she had also lifted the share price of News Corporation.
Several posters said the incident had changed their views of Deng, who had tended to divide opinion in China.
Deng was born in 1968 in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province. True to the Maoist spirit of that age her father – an engineer – named her Wenge (meaning cultural revolution). She changed it in her teens when a more open and international mood took hold.
In 1987 she met Jake Cherry, a businessman from Los Angeles who was in China to establish a freezer-making factory. He and his wife, Joyce, sponsored Deng's visa to the US where, according to a 2000 profile in the Wall Street Journal,she shared a bedroom with their five-year-old daughter.
Cherry divorced his wife and in 1990 married Deng, who had enrolled in California State University at Northridge. The marriage ended after less than three years but that was long enough for Deng to secure a green card and live in the US as a resident alien.
Deng joined Star TV, part of News Corp, as an intern in 1996. Reports on how she met Murdoch differ. One version has it that they were introduced at a party in 1998; another that she worked as his interpreter in Shanghai and Beijing. Murdoch divorced his wife, Anna, a year later.
Deng translates for her husband and acts as an intermediary or representative for many of his businesses on the mainland. The couple was reported to have bought a house in Beijing in 2004 for 30 million yuan, which was at the time the most expensive courtyard home sold in the capital.
Although Deng is admired for her looks, her language skills and a spectacular social climb from a modest home, she is sometimes derided as a family wrecker and gold-digger. That view is being revised. “I never used to like Deng because I thought she was too materialistic, but I like her now,” said a blogger under the name Jixunli.
The celebrity focus on Deng by bloggers contrasts with the political approach of the state media, who have tried to use the hacking scandal to score points against the western media.
"This incident directly exposes the inherent money-seeking nature of western media today, and the false nature of the concepts of 'freedom', 'impartiality' and 'human rights' that they have long bandied about," noted Xinhuanews agency in an opinion piece.
“As the scandal has continued to develop, it has become a major assault on the model of media supervision and control in the West.”
Editorial control in China, however, is ultimately concentrated in the hands of the propaganda department, which faces less scrutiny, accountability and competition.
"The Xinhuapiece itself, stripped of all nuance and serving the narrow objectives of China's Marxist view of journalism, is an illustration of much that is wrong with Chinese journalism," noted David Bandurski on the China Media Project website. – (Guardian service)