The Economist recently announced a dedicated weekly section on China. It said, China is the second country for them to have done this for, followed only by their singling out the United States since 1942. In my view, the extra attention they give to ‘China’ as a topic is hardly going to help Westerners’ understanding of China. Their editorial staff really needs an overhaul, as one of their reader observes:
You need an editor and staff with some personal background in China (and I don’t mean expats with Chinese spouses). You need better academic resources. And somehow you must all learn that western values are not universal values, and that all cultures are internally legitimate yet benefit from external contact. To fail in this regard will simply amplify existing cultural misunderstandings and cripple the great impending social and political globalizations that must follow the economic one already in progress.
The Economist’s coverage of China is bigoted, as exemplified by their debut article – which I am rebutting in this post (my rebuttal on the right). If The Economist is genuinely interested in improving China for the Chinese, they’d be able to discuss the issues and policies specifically – not a wholesale rejection of the China ‘model.’ Read more…
On November 29, 2011, the Washington Post cited on a page 1 story a study done at the Georgetown University that China’s nuclear arsenal was 10x as large U.S. government official (and experts) estimates. The study and the article drew a great deal of attention. The information was false. MIT Associate Professor of Political Science, M. Taylor Fravel, has done an excellent write up of this controversy, and his analysis also revealed exaggeration of Chinese troops bordering India. Read more…
(On January 5, 2012, I sat down with Shaun Rein, founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group, to talk about China. He gave us his insights into major events of 2011. You may listen to the podcast or read the transcript below. Click on the play button or right-click on the link to save the podcast for local listening: link. In this hour-long interview, we touched on many topics: pollution, CNN and Christian Bale’s recent run-in with Chinese police, food safety, Weibo, and so on.)
DeWang:2011 was another eventful year for China. Just when her bullet train seems unstoppable, a fatal collision left the whole country in doubt. China achieved space docking, something only the U.S. and Russia have managed. Then there was Tiger Mom.
I have invited a real China expert to weigh in on these events and other events that mattered to China. What were the Chinese narratives? How did the Chinese feel about them? I couldn’t have found a better person to do this with. Read more…
(Below is an editorial by blogger 龙信明 countering an article published in the New York Times by Minxin Pei, who is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California. Indeed, why would Americans subject their college-age child to such aptitude? Or, rather, ineptitude. DeWang)
Great Party, but Where’s the Communism?
Minxin Pei Proves that Freedom of Opinion is a Bad Thing
It is puzzling that apparently well-staffed Western media with an otherwise high standard of reporting, will seemingly ignore those same standards for the sake of what appears to be cheap propaganda.
Many articles on China contain no little or no news value but appear intended primarily to criticise, mock, ridicule, demonise and disparage, a country that hasn’t actually done anything to anybody. Read more…
I plan to blog about this general issue sometime soon. Right now however, I just can’t help commenting on just two points for the time being, particularly because many westerners have humongous misconceptions about these issues. Almost every article on the topic contains at least a reference to these two fallacious points.
The TED interview below (video at the end of the post) was conducted in July 2010 with Julian Assange talking about the need for the public to keep an eye out for government conduct. Americans cherish freedom of the press, and by that, it is generally understood that the media’s job is to be the watchdog of the government and any other organization of power.
Do Americans have freedom of the press? I don’t think so. Or definitely not in function as how Americans understand their purpose to be. Assange is about to release a new documentary film criticizing the Western media. Referring to the New York Times, he said: Read more…
A story published a few days ago in the LA Times talked about an Israeli organization, Shavei Israel, which helped a few Keifeng Jews to make Aliyah (immigrate to Israel). It quoted a few Kaifeng Jews having made the trip as saying how Israel is superior to China. Consider the title of the article: Read more…
What is the worst thing you could say or write about someone? Maybe alleging that they are a murderer. Perhaps it is labeling them a child molester. Both these accusations, when used without factual merit, constitute serious slander or libel. But what is the worst thing you could say about a group of people, a nation or ethnic group?
During the Middle Ages in Europe, Blood Libel was used to devastating effect towards harming and justifying the persecution of Jews.
[Update October 11, 2011 for reasons here and here: There are some in] the English language ‘China’ blogosphere having a cow over a recent China Daily editorial by CHEN Weihua criticizing the U.S. media for lack of coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Chen is correct in pointing out this phenomenon. I find it ridiculous these bloggers are criticizing Chen while ‘prominent’ Americans all over have been saying the same thing! A reader at the WSJ summarized it the best: Read more…
The recent “goodwill” game on August 18th between the Chinese basketball team the Bayi Rockets and the American college team the Georgetown Hoyas will unfortunately go down in history as an infamous case of unsportsman-like conduct. But the coverage of the game by the American press will also go down as an exemplary case of unabashed bias and sinophobic bigotry.
Even in the US’s long history of yellow(peril) journalism against China, coverage of this game is a salient example of lack of balance and outright prejudice against China and its people. Read more…
This time the NYT reporter, Andrew Jacobs, lies about a Chinese journalist being detained by Chinese police. How do we know? In fact, the journalist has come out to say that he wasn’t and that the NYT didn’t even interview him. Below is the NYT article and I show what a propaganda garbage it is. Read on. Read more…
Couple of days ago, I was listening to this NPR segment where Bill Adair of PolitiFact.com was asked to weigh in on the recently CNN hosted 2012 Republican debate. PoliticFact.com specializes in fact-checking assertions made by American politicians. For example, on the following attack on Obama’s stimulus from Texas governor Rick Perry:
“He had $800 billion worth of stimulus in the first round of stimulus. It created zero jobs.”
Lecturing others amounts to schadenfreude. Wait. What?
An interesting phenomenon seems to be in the air. With the current financial crisis in America and unrest in Britain, it appears that multiple western media outlets cannot resist the temptation to interpret China’s and other countries’ responses in terms of “schadenfreude“. Although not as amusing as accusing the politburo of smoking weed, it certainly has all the qualities that characterize the distinct flavours of garrulous western reporting about China and Asia in general.
In response to the crises in Washington, Xinhua, in a much cited phrase (One that the international media has gone completely gaga over), called upon the US to “cure its addiction to debt” . This was interpreted by The Economist as schadenfreude, claiming that “regional celebrations” have erupted in Asia over the debt crisis. Read more…
(Update: see Ray’s comments below. I originally had ‘sacked’ in the title which is probably too harsh given he is reassigned to another post.)
Out of the recent bullet train crash near Wenzhou, I think one of the biggest lessons for the Ministry of Rail is the importance of good PR. Spokesperson Wang Yongping (王勇平) has created many controversies and was subject of a lot of public anger and criticisms. (See here and here.) According to Caixing, Wang Yongping has now been dismissed from his post. Read more…
After first reading this article from the Associated Press (echoed by the NPR), I thought, well, it seems to be all facts based. Over the years, I have come to realize critical thinking is required when consuming Western press. Read the left column through first before reading my comments on the right. Try to ignore my highlighting. Let me know if you think I am being too critical. Did my points of contention jump out at you during your initial reading? Read more…
Interesting story here. The truth is it says more about the American newsroom. As the Colbert Report revealed here, news can come out of American journalists’ asses, and they often do. See highlighted text below; so very true. Hence, newsrooms across America are going bankrupt. The only way to buck the trend, frankly, is to do real reporting and more truth! Read more…
PR, as in public relations, is an art. Over the last few days I have been watching Wang Yongping (王勇平) addressing the Chinese press on the bullet train crash. On one hand, I feel bad for him, for he was genuinely trying to relay facts. On the other hand, I thought he really bungled on certain issues which created controversies that shouldn’t have been in the first place. For example, his ‘I believe it’ comment on the burying of D301′s head should instead simply be that was what he was told and he would find out more. It indeed turned out to be a safety and rescue consideration. Since the rescue team would have details of the circumstances, his job should have been to set expectations and get the press to wait, not speculate, until details emerged.
I put the below diagram together because I think social media is ever more important, and false information in it has to be cleaned in order to let truthful and helpful information propagate. Read more…
I was in particular looking into information related to the two year old girl who was found. A panelist on CCTV criticized the Ministry of Rail for declaring rescue over and the girl being found afterwards. Roland translates the first account of police captain Shao Yerong (from CCTV) on rescuing the girl. Follow above link for details.
[Update: Please see Wukailong remarks in the comments section. He is correct, and my fault for lumping Norwegian media into this supposed 'Western' media madness on this particular issue. To their credit, they are reporting the Oslo shooting and bombing as 'terrorist' acts.]
In looking at the New York Times coverage of the Oslo bombing and shooting, Glenn Greenwald sees ongoing pattern of attributing terrorism only to Muslims and not acts committed by the White. As I have written here about a year ago – “Harvard University study catches major U.S. media pants down – systematic reporting of U.S. waterboarding as not torture,” this sort of behavior is nothing new. Some may argue there is no conspiracy by the Western media for this sort of thing. Probably not. I often like to ask back – do racists need to conspire to commit racism? I don’t think so. Their public display emboldens each other for sure. Greenwald’s analysis below: Read more…
Ministry of Rail spokesperson Wang Yongping bows to passengers at press conference (Xinhua)
The Chinese media has been pressing for information relating to why didn’t the D301 train stop in time and instead rear-ended the D3115. In the latest press conference over the collision, Ministry of Rail spokesperson Wang Yongping (王勇平) informed the press that the ‘blackbox’ for the D301 train has been recovered and experts are investigating the cause of the crash. So far, 38 people were confirmed dead with more than 200 injured.
CCTV has also reported the repairs to the rail road is done and rail traffic has resumed.
A passenger sent the first SOS micro-blog message through Sina’s Weibo (username Yangjuan Quanyang) at 8:47pm at the time of the accident and was soon forwarded 112,000 times. Her initial message said: Read more…
Lately, we have focused on propaganda in the Western media. Reader cp made (what I think) are very measured and accurate characterizations of what is happening around us. It is short and to the point, and I simply want to highlight it. As many here have argued in the past, these type of issues need to be discussed in the public. Comedians bring awareness to social issues through satire. Mark Twain challenge prevailing racist attitudes through his novel, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Though this blog may sound ‘serious,’ we feel it is critically important for everyone to wake up and recognize the nature of Western capitalistic media. This is not about choosing sides. Rather, it is about not letting ourselves to be further polarized. Read more…
Russia Today interviews Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, a researcher at Center for Research for Globalization, about the illegal arming of Libyan rebels. Nazemroaya also tells first hand account of Reuters reporter lying about meeting rebel leaders to give false impression of support by the population in Tripoli.
Following is a side-by-side look at how Reuters and China Daily reported on the South China Sea dispute in context of the U.S.-China relations. Again, you will have to decide which media outlet’s article is of higher journalistic standard. One thing to bear in mind is that U.S. media almost always refer to the Chinese media ‘government mouthpieces’ as if they are propaganda machines. In that case, read the Reuters article with that in mind too. Which article in your mind is more a egregious and blatant propaganda piece? To be honest, I didn’t think the Reuters’ piece is that ‘bad.’ The more important point I want to make is that media is one sided. There is no such thing as ‘free’ media. We can see that when things are put side-by-side.
(Bold comments in parenthesis are mine.)Read more…
"In VS Naipaul's prophetic novel 'A Bend in the River,' Salim, the Indian-African narrator, laments his community's political immaturity, envying Africa's European conquerors: "an intelligent and energetic people", who "wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else," but who also "wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves". Salim believes that the Europeans "could do one thing and say something quite different because they had an idea of what they owed to their civilisation"; and "they got both the slaves and statues"." (Pankaj Mishra)
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