Friday, June 13, 2008

China Correspondents

New York Times and the BBC have really bad China articles mostly because of their bad China correspondents. What makes their China articles and correspondents so bad?

The articles themselves often imply that China is a threat, Chinese nationalism is a threat, and things like the food shortage and global warming are China's fault. This xenophobic view of China is mostly sensationalism so in my view, it's bad journalism, but that's the industry standard these days. What is more annoying is that almost every article becomes an editorial about censorship and restrictions on journalists and the lack of democracy. The worst part is when they claim to represent how the majority of Chinese people feel about Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the Chinese Communist Party.

They do this by using Chinese correspondents who are meant to be more credible since they are Chinese. However, these correspondents are more often than not people who have bad history with the Communist Party. Some are pro-democracy activists who have been kicked out of the country. However, they do not really have a following in China. Some are even seen as traitors.

Take this New York Times' article.

Here is a comment in response.
As a former Tiananmen protester living in the States, I believe that "The future of China is in the hands of ordinary Chinese." Unfortunately, Ma Jian's view does not reflect views of ordinary Chinese no matter how many western media or their readers like his views. The bottom line is that Chinese people know what are their best interests during their cause leading to prosperity and democracy. They certainly do not need others to remind them what to do and how to do to achieve their best interests.


Some selections of the discussion about this BBC article in Chinese from the BBC:
Black Horse Liu's article? He was one of so-called "four scholars" during 6.4 Tiananmen event. He used to state that China would have been much better off if it had experienced real colonialism under Great British like HK. No wonder BBC still recommend his opinion after so many years.

Liu and his ilk have been long marginalized in China, political power wise. Now their sole role is to serve western media as dissent voice of "Chinese people" to pacify their readers' thirsty for hope of transforming China with "freedom and democracy".


Only Western people listen to these people as if they are really credible, but Chinese people know who these people are. It's like if Chinese people quoted Ralph Nader as an expert on what Americans think. Another example is when people quote the Epoch Times, which every Chinese person knows is a Falun Gong newspaper that publishes outright lies.

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