It looks like it might be a good job. A print journalism job. Titled. Overseas. Maybe a real salary.

The sort of job any of the thousands of print journos thrown out of the business in the past couple of years might find attractive.

The ad is for a pair of openings at the China Daily, an English-language newspaper based in Beijing and owned by the Chinese government (though the ad doesn’t make that last part clear). Here is the ad for it, right out of journalismjobs.com

A former colleague forwarded it to me. But I had seen a version of it, before, late last year. One of these might be the same job, still unfilled.

On the surface, it has some appeal. Full-time print journalism. Exotic. China. An actual newspaper funded by the government, so immune to market forces.

Full-time print journalism. Did I mention that?

I even fit several of the qualifications. I could do it. Sure. Go over for a couple of years, just deal with the awful pollution, see the country in the meantime …

And then you think it through and, of course, it’s a non-starter. Because to take this job is to become part of one-party state that at its core is about anything but the truth, and no responsible, sentient journalist can possibly take that job. Ever.

This is the country, after all, busily trying to cover up/ignore/stultify any memories of Tiananmen Square and the massacre of the pro-democracy students there 20 years ago on Thursday.

No. Can’t go there.

The Los Angeles Times today has a story about the Tiananmen anniversary and how desperately and thoroughly the Chinese government is trying to choke off any news of it.

In short, China is shutting down the Internet so that no one can recall the massacre of students by government soldiers 20 years ago.

That is what they do, in China. That is what they are about. Censorship and repression and killing their own people if they threaten the government.

An unemployed journalist might be tempted to overlook some of that, or rationalize it away, after the Beijing Olympics, when China cracked the door open for a bit and tried hard to give the impression that it is a semi-free society. Isn’t this the new, pragmatic China? The successful and striving one? The smiling and agreeable one?

In Beijing, I dealt with hundreds of well-scrubbed, bright-eyed young volunteers who were massively proud of their country. And are we that much different?

Actually, yes. Because, at the end, China and all one-party states — let’s just say it, Communist states — can’t have the truth floating around out there. It could be damaging to its reputation. Its story.  The party line.

China has, for now, bought and paid for the allegiance of its youth. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty in the 20 years since Tiananmen. And the Chinese people’s part of this bargain? Unswerving loyalty to the state. Mute agreement with whatever it does. As long as the cars and apartments and rice keep coming.

Ultimately, it’s an ugly arrangement.  Even someone who lives in the ultimate consumer society, the United States of America, would balk at the idea of surrendering his conscience to Big Brother in exchange for a TV, a bicycle, an education.

But that’s what China demands. “You take our stuff; you don’t get out of line.”

To work for the China Daily? Sounds like the answer to a prayer, for some English-speaking journalist. Until you think about it. Damn.

I saw the China Daily for three weeks, when I was at the Beijing Olympics. When the newspaper and the Party were on their best behavior. But even then, it was clear the China Daily prints the truth only if it doesn’t interfere with the machinations of the state. Bad news, “anti-social” behavior. We can’t have that. Same as it always was.

Working for the China Daily would involve selling out on a massive,  even criminal scale. Think of the worst PR job for the most rapacious corporation you can imagine … and working for the China Daily would be worse. Because no corporation has ever been able to police the thoughts of 1.3 billion people.

To take that job, you become, essentially, a member of China’s Communist Party propaganda apparatus. Not just an observer. You become a part of the cover-up.  The Big Lie. It would be the antithesis of everything a self-respecting journalist should stand for. To take one of those jobs would make you as complicit as any Chinese citizen who accepts the new apartment in exchange for never questioning The Party.

Actually, it would make you worse than the average citizen. Because you would know better. You would be a knowing, witting sellout to an evil system.   You wouldn’t be in the news business, you would be in the news-suppression business. All the news that’s fit to print? All the news The Party says is fit to print.

This whole train of thought ends in two depressing realizations:

–In a time when no one is hiring, here are a couple of jobs, potentially good jobs on several levels … that I can’t have.

–The China Daily will fill these jobs, eventually. Because somewhere out there are veteran journalists … Americans, Brits, Aussies … who will take these jobs. Against everything that they ought to stand for. Freedom of the press, the First Amendment, an attempt to tell the truth … all that.

I would rather be unemployed, thank you. I like to think I never will be that desperate.