The Great Chinese photo fake

The old Chinese tradition of doctoring photographs for propaganda purposes is not dead. But whereas in the days of Chairman Mao the Chinese people were barely aware of the trickery, today they get an apology.

A Chinese newspaper has had to grovel to readers following the discovery that an award-winning photograph of a herd of Tibetan antelope, frolicking under the controversial Qinghai-Tibet railway as a high-speed train passes overhead, is a fake.

The fabricated photo was released in 2006 by the state-run Xinhua news agency to rebuff criticism of the railway line's impact on endangered Tibetan wildlife. It was lauded as the "most memorable news photo of the year" by China Central Television (CCTV).

In a public statement, intended to deflect responsibility for the incident away from CCTV and Xinhua, the editorial committee of the Daqing Evening News - one of whose photographers created the image - apologised to readers for the "negative influence" of the photo. The paper's editor-in-chief was forced to resign.

The doctoring of the photograph came to light only after eagle-eyed users of Chinese photographic website 'Unlimited Sights and Colours' questioned the picture's veracity. Evening News photographer Liu Weiqiang was finally forced to admit that the offending image was, in fact, a composite of two distinct pictures digitally 'stitched' together.

Liu said that he had never intended the image to be used as a news photograph. A transcript of the CCTV awards presentation ceremony, however, has Liu stating that he had wanted "to be able to capture the harmony among the Tibetan antelopes, the train, men and nature on July 1, 2006 [the official opening date for the railway line]".

The scandal comes hot on the heels of last October's 'Tigergate' controversy, when a farmer in central China purportedly photographed an endangered South China tiger. The species had not been seen in the wild for more than 20 years and the photos were run across the media.

Numerous Chinese photographic experts have since insisted that the pictures have been faked, or even that the tiger, largely hidden by foliage, is a cardboard cut-out. The issue has yet to be resolved, and has done nothing to help China's conservation efforts.

Liu’s 'stitch-up' was achieved using Photoshop. In Mao Tse-tung's day, when anyone who fell out with the party leader was likely to be 'removed' from the historical record, state technicians had to struggle with airbrush, scalpel and inks.

A famous 1936 photograph of Mao and fellow Chinese revolutionaries featured a smiling Po Ku. Years later, when Po fell out of favour with Mao, he was removed from the picture completely.

An iconic 1957 image of Mao standing in a dense field of wheat originally also contained the then Vice-President Liu Shaoqi. With the advent of Mao's tumultuous Cultural Revolution in 1966, Liu was denounced as a traitor and "capitalist roader" and removed from the image.

Technicians at the Xinhua photographic department simply painted more wheat plants over Liu, leaving a grinning Mao standing alone amid a bumper crop. ·