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Chinese Citizens React to Fake Western Media Coverage Of Jasmine Revolution In China

March 1, 2011 by YinYang 6 Comments

ESWN recently  translated a Chinese post from Anti CNN documenting fake photos used by Western media in fomenting a “Jasmine Revolution” story and he titled it, “Fake Western Media Coverage Of Jasmine Revolution In China.”  Here is an example, an article written by Reuters and sold to Irish Independent for distribution; never-mind the article itself having little fact, the Reuters photo itself was made up:

This Reuters photo was found via Tineye to come from an anti-Japanese demonstration in Lanzhou city (Gansu province) on December 24, 2010. (Anti CNN)

Despite the non-news, the Western media continue to milk this “story” by molding it into Chinese government crack-downs of dissent and confrontations with Western journalists.  Even the supposedly cream of the crop, NPR, continued the assault; their latest piece from the Associated Press, “China Rolls Back Press Freedoms Amid Protest Calls.”

When there is no protest, the “crackdowns” become news.  When the “crackdown” news become dry, they will vacillate on something else, and you can bet money it will be about “freedom” or “democracy” through some other spin.  They all employ this strategy. As I have said before, there need not be any sort of conspiracy. Once a certain spin is in the public, they all take hint and echo one another.

Boxun News, based in the U.S., was reported by the Western media to have carried the original article calling for the “Jasmine Revolution” protests in China. It has recently announced taking down the related articles.  ESWN relayed the Boxun announcement for his readers below:

(Boxun News (temporary websites)) February 26, 2011.

Reader friends, people in various sectors of society:

Thank you for your attention and concern for Boxun recently. Although Boxun merely posted the Jasmine notice as sent to us, Boxun has come under tremendous pressure. The severe attacks on Boxun since February 19 has made it difficult for Boxun to operate normally. The dissemination of the Jasmine incident has also caused uncalled for hard to countless numbers of activities and netizens in China. In order to ensure that our readers can see the normal Boxun and read about the analysis of current affairs in China, we think that it is necessary to suspend the publication of the relevant notices. We hope that our readers and people in various sectors of society will understand.

At the same time, we hope that the relevant authorities will cease the persecution, intimidation and harassment of certain people and t heir families, as well as stop the attacks on Boxun as soon as possible.

As Boxun says, someone or organization solicited Boxun to relay the call for protests. I think that person or organization also at the same time organized the announcement on Twitter and probably on Facebook and other Internet services. It is interesting that the Western media focused on Boxun as the “original” source of the call. To me, that was a strategy to fixate Westerners on the idea the original call came from a Chinese to give credence to this story. So far, they have not offered any evidence on who actually called for the protests.

Anyone want to bet, if the call actually came from a Western NGO, the Western media would still be interested in sharing that fact?

ESWN also relayed this information below, and it looks like FLG is determined to make something out of this “Jasmine Revolution.”

(Tang Baiqiao’s blog)

Influenced by the democratic revolutions in North Africa and Middle East, the courageous Chinese people (the young people in particular) are promoting a Jasmine Revolution in China. We who are overseas are deeply enoucraged and we want to be able to contribute our share of efforts to promote democratic revolution in China.

Over the past several days, the overseas news website Boxun has published a vast amount of information about the Jasmine Revolution, serving a very important role in promoting this democratic revolution. But today Boxun made a public statement to the effect that it will no longer publish the relevant information: “Because Boxun was attacked, we are unable to continue to publish information about the Jasmine flower,” “Boxun has come under a tremendous amount of pressure,” “we hope the relevant authorities will cease their persecution, intimidation and harassment of certain people and t heir families, and the attacks on Boxun should also stop as soon as possible.”

We are deeply sympathetic towards the attacks on the Boxun website. We also strongly condemn the Chinese Communists for attacking the Boxun website as well as intimidating and persecuting the Boxun workers and their families.

For this, we held an emergency discussion which led to our decision to establish a global information platform for the Jasmine Revolution in China. We will take on the task of disseminating and spreading information about the Jasmine Revolution activities. We welcome all netizens inside and outside China who support and participate in this Jasmine Revolution to forward information, exchange ideas and help each other. We welcome all Internet media to join us to support this Jasmine Revolution and work together to serve the Jasmine Revolution in China.

Democracy shall prevail!

ESWN did some research and found the background of Tang Baiqiao:

[Tang Baiqiao’s Wikipedia entry: In an August 2009 interview with The Epoch Times: “I resist [CCP violence], not only for myself, but for all the dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners…all the people of this country [who wish] to be free, everyone has freedom of speech, [and should be able to] express their views.” Tang is a frequent on-air special commentator for New Tang Dynasty Television. He is a spokesman and officer for the China Interim Government. In the Chinese version of Wikipedia, 唐柏桥 is a Radio Free Asia special commentator, a NDTV special commentator, an Epoch Times columnist and a Kanzhongguo columnist among other things.]

Recently, I saw some Epoch Times papers on a counter in a local store. I noticed virtually all of the Epoch Times articles were authored by non-Chinese. Patrick French, former director of the Tibet Campaign in London, U.K., once wrote an Op-Ed arguing that the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan cause has been hijacked by Western NGO’s. He implied the NGO’s have agendas of their own, and no longer compatible with that of the Dalai Lama. He advised the Dalai Lama to start afresh in his approach with the Chinese government.

My point here is that the FLG on it’s own probably does not have the clout to pull off the organization of Westerners in its staff of writers for the Epoch Times paper. It appears the FLG and some certain Western NGO’s seem to be aligned to reach the scale it has in the West. All these players along with the Western media seem well aligned. Again, forget about the conspiracy theory. They each have their separate interests. And the FLG’s politics, like the Dalai Lama’s, may have been usurped.

Regardless, I don’t think a revolution is likely. The reason is quite simple. Unlike the 1980’s, these types of reporting in the last two decades have completely destroyed Western media credibility. (The Western media can no longer be a rallying force they were like pre-1989.)

Hence, back to the point behind this post’s title, I want to share the following Chinese readers comments at the Anti CNN article:


wyd2008
wyd2008
这西媒真是狗改不了吃屎, 惟恐中国不乱 真是费尽了心机 实在让人佩服 他们是不是觉得这天下人都是傻子, 任他们忽悠啊.

Western media is really powerless to change as a dog is incapable of stop eating feces. Fear of no chaos in China have racked their brains. Really impressive. Do they think all people under heavens are fools? Let them be ignorant.


台湾加油
台湾加油
难道是害怕民主国家的人民知道真相?
我常常听说,只有专制国家才害怕人民知道真相啊。

Is it fear of the people in democratic countries knowing truth?
I have often heard that only authoritarian countries fear their people knowing the truth.


rockmass
rockmass


acolman
acolman

西媒会恨死我们的,真担心某一天内外反华势力一勾结毁了这AC网站。

Western media will hate us; really worried that one day a collusion between anti-China forces inside and outside will ruine this site of AC (anti CNN).


tadpole
tadpole

无耻无聊又无知的四脚兽,就是这些外媒的真实现状。

Shameless, ignorant, and know-nothing four-legged beast; that is truth of these foreign media.

Filed Under: Analysis, media, News, Opinion Tagged With: "Jasmine Revolution", Anti CNN, media bias, Wangfujing

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Charles Liu says

    March 2, 2011 at 10:26 pm

    The Falun Gong connection is pretty thick. Beside the usual suspects, the manifesto’s call to pick up trash is basically a FLG calling card. Was there another mass incident that called for clean up in China’s history? Only other time was the 1999 FLG protest.

    What these groups that promoted this protest have in common? US govt funding. Check NED grant for Human Rights In China, for example. Wang Dan is on the take from both US host as well as Taiwanese government.

  2. Kathy says

    March 5, 2011 at 1:05 pm

    Hi, nice work. I have added a link to this in my blog at http://shoe08.blogspot.com, and added your site to my blogroll at http://diggchina.blogspot.com.

    Also, I was banned last week for 3 days from posting comments for posting info about the director of Students for a Free Tibet, exposing his past stint at NED. I was outraged that he was calling for “Tiananmen 2.0” in China! My commenting priveliges have been restored, and I went right to his outrageous post, and posted the info.

    take care.

    ps, Falun is a town in Sweeden, where GW Bush, Salem and Osama bin Laden had their photos taken! No Kidding!

  3. YinYang says

    March 5, 2011 at 11:31 pm

    @Kathy,

    Thanks for the compliments. You have collected a great deal of useful materials. I will go through you blogs more thoroughly when I get a chance.

  4. pug_ster says

    April 6, 2011 at 8:29 am

    The latest news about the people who started this ‘Jasmine Revolution’ are not even from China.

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jj5699I0fkr8PX1A7udz2XCLeIXQ?docId=273b06a36d12476089c9b01b95d2558b

    They also are concerned that, with more than half their members outside China, their movement might be seen as a foreign-backed, anti-China plot rather than a response to real domestic problems.

  5. Allen says

    December 17, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    Fox News caught using fake footage to report Russian “riots.”

    http://rt.com/news/fox-moscow-fake-riots-281/

  6. jxie says

    December 17, 2011 at 8:45 pm

    If a snafu (intentionally or unintentionally) of this nature is on a domestic issues, outfits such as NYT, MSNBC, Huffington Post will jump all over Fox News. Curiously none of them has any interest in covering it.

    The only American outfit that I can find even mentioned it was Forbes. Forbes had some blur of the “accidental” error (how the heck they know it was accidental?). If your international news sources are only American ones (or any single country’s for that matter), you are batshit brainwashed.

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