Very slick. Thanks for that!

Anyone interested in this topic should read this blog post recommended earlier today by eswn. Beautifully written and on the whole quite intelligent.

April 10, 2008 @ 5:09 pm | Comment

Well, the “fenqings” are definitely getting large in numbers these days.

That’s what you get for standing behind your imperialist government and mount attacks against China.

Chances are, the Chinese will stand behind theirs.

April 10, 2008 @ 5:15 pm | Comment

Jinhan, nice to see you commenting like that from – where else? – the good old US of A. So interesting that so many of my most aggressive commenters have IP addresses starting with 72, often from Alabama or thereabouts….

April 10, 2008 @ 5:30 pm | Comment

Don’t know why you’d think I’m from the USA and I don’t really care what you are implying.

But it does get very bothersome especially because you never contribute to the actual discussion and would prefer to take inconsequential cheap shots at me instead.

April 10, 2008 @ 6:21 pm | Comment

Yeah, Richard…I mean besides running the blog, administering the site, writing the posts, monitoring the forum….how DO you contribute?

April 10, 2008 @ 6:46 pm | Comment

I know, I’m guilty as charged. I just sit in the background and take pot shots at commenters.

Jinshan, sorry if I am wrong, but your IP address indicates you are using Bellsouth.net and are located in Alabama. All of your comments are from the same IP address. I didn’t say your were from the US; I said you were in the US. If I am wrong and you are not posting from within the US please correct me.

And thank you for never taking cheap shots yourself. From your previous comment: That’s what you get for standing behind your imperialist government and mount attacks against China.

April 10, 2008 @ 6:56 pm | Comment

“If I am wrong and you are not posting from within the US please correct me.”

You are wrong.

“And thank you for never taking cheap shots yourself. From your previous comment: That’s what you get for standing behind your imperialist government and mount attacks against China.”

That was more of a jab against the tendency shared by liberals and conservatives alike in instigation hatred against China and ignoring dissenting Chinese voice.

If you consider that a “cheap shot”, well then, at least it’s a cheap shot against your politics and not an ad hominem attack.

April 10, 2008 @ 7:15 pm | Comment

Okay, sorry for instigating hatred against China and misreading where you are posting from (very odd).

Now, back to that energetic video Jeremiah posted…

April 10, 2008 @ 7:18 pm | Comment

Apology accepted.

The video does cover some of facts that the Western Media conveniently “missed”–Despite not meant to be an informative video.

April 10, 2008 @ 7:35 pm | Comment

Apology accepted.

The video does cover some of facts that the Western Media conveniently “missed”–Despite not meant to be an informative video.

April 10, 2008 @ 7:36 pm | Comment

@richard
“, but your IP address indicates you are using Bellsouth.net and are located in Alabama.”

Is he using a proxy server in order to get access from CH to some blocked web sites besides this blog…?

April 10, 2008 @ 7:38 pm | Comment

@jinhian
“The video does cover some of facts that the Western Media conveniently “missed”–Despite not meant to be an informative video.”

Just try to guess what is “missing” behind all the censure, and limitation to journalist in reporting any issue inside China.

And also try to guess what is “missing” to average john doe in CH through blocking TV emission whenever something sensitive appear on TV signals received in CH.

April 10, 2008 @ 7:41 pm | Comment

“And also try to guess what is “missing” to average john doe in CH through blocking TV emission whenever something sensitive appear on TV signals received in CH.”

Fair enough. What about overseas Chinese? Are they manipulated by the CCP too? You obviously think so. But to most Chinese folks, both overseas and within China, they take offense to the West calling them “brainwashed” whenever they disagreed with the popular notions of the West.

And this is the dilemma the West has to deal with…They purport to speak for the Chinese people against the Chinese government, but now the Chinese communities have proved otherwise.

Overnight, Western media *lost all credibility* to the majority of the Chinese, for it’s prejudices in reporting.

The hostility between overseas Chinese and the media is only growing because of the media’s failure to respond to Chinese grievances and of course, further abuses of their profession.

I’m quite happy about this, because for YEARS I’ve been trying to tell the people, both Westerners and Chinese, that the media lies. Recent events sure made my job easier, at least when it comes to the Chinese.

And hopefully one day, the western public will also realize how they are being manipulated and played like a flute.

April 10, 2008 @ 8:01 pm | Comment

I don’t believe the Western media lies. They fuck up, for sure, and they constantly see things with little or no perspective, and they can be real sloppy. But the only examples of lies I’ve seen are the Steven Glass and Jason Blair-type scandals, for which the media in question issued lengthy apologies. For outright lies, you should have been here in 2003 watching CCTV: “We are happy to report that Beijing is completely SARS-free!” Show me a lie like that in the Western media.

By the way, where are you posting from? I’m in Beijing myself.

April 10, 2008 @ 8:16 pm | Comment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twHzXN3kNTs

This is very funny too

April 10, 2008 @ 8:27 pm | Comment

“I don’t believe the Western media lies. They fuck up, for sure, and they constantly see things with little or no perspective, and they can be real sloppy.”

Oh so when Beijing “misreports” they didn’t just “fuck up”?

“Show me a lie like that in the Western media.”

The BBC, for example, lies on an extensive range of issues. The ones I have right off my head:

“The FARC deals drugs.” A lie refuted numerous times.

“Dalai is Tibet’s spiritual leader.” They actually send two journalists to Tibet in 2002, I think, and they shattered that myth by pointing out that Dalai was only the leader of the Gelug sect in Tibet. Yet they insist on calling him that.

Just a few days ago, the BBC reported that the Chinese ambassador in France apologized for his remarks comparing Tibet with the previous riots in France. Of course, the ambassador denies ever said anything like that.

A year ago an Italian newspaper claimed that China will “ban all Bibles” in the Olympic village, and almost every major news agency reported this. And that was a lie, too.

Then there’s the infamous remark on CNN, when the reporter called the Tibetan riot a “peaceful protest” though at the time it was made very clear that it was a violent racist riot.

I’m sure if I do 10 minutes of research, I’ll probably be able to list 30 more lies. But I think you get the picture.

But it’s mostly about what you *don’t report* that makes the media on both sides effective liars.

[i]By the way, where are you posting from? I’m in Beijing myself.[/i]

At the moment, I’m living on the “proud and native land” of Canada…Don’t know if you’ve heard of it.

April 10, 2008 @ 8:59 pm | Comment

“But it’s mostly about what you *don’t report* that makes the media on both sides effective liars.”

Hey Jinhan-Do you ever watch CCTV 9? I do (I always ask myself why)

They only report things that make China look good. Today they talked about Jacques Roggue the Chairman of the Olympic committee, and how he said the torch relay would go on, and how he was pleased with the S.F. leg of the torch relay.

When I read the western media on the internet, they told about his other comments-that China undertook an obligation to improve human rights as part of its pledge to get the olympics. Why didn’t CCTV 9 talk about this?

This is one in a daily list of situations where Chinese media only reports what makes it look good. What are they so afraid of?

April 10, 2008 @ 9:27 pm | Comment

The Chinese media is hardly the only one doing it.

Read my sentence again.

April 10, 2008 @ 9:32 pm | Comment

But, one thing I find very useful with both the Chinese and Western media is their willingness to expose each other’s lies.

Comparing and contrasting their reports reveals a lot of journalistic dishonest on both sides, though it still doesn’t tell you the truth because both lie and neither focus on the real issue.

April 10, 2008 @ 9:38 pm | Comment

well,

i am not going to defend the western media.

and i agree with your above point.

April 10, 2008 @ 9:46 pm | Comment

Jinhan, you don’t get it. Telling people there is no SARS in Beijing while knowing full well there was SARS in Beijing is a lie. What lie by the Western media do you see as a rough parallel. As I said, I don’t mean examples of sloppiness – getting facts wrong and then correcting them, or not writing with enough perspective. I am talking about telling preconceived, bold-faced, completely intention lies. Not mistakes. And there is a huge difference between the two. All media make mistakes. No respectable media lies. Even Fox News, which I detest, “only” distorts and misrepresents; they don’t lie. I suspect I won’t be successful in getting you to see the distinction.

And now, back to the video….

April 10, 2008 @ 9:51 pm | Comment

richard-

I don’t know. there comes a point where incompetence or a desire to make someone look bad gets so bad that it could be grouped in the same category.

to show pictures of indian or nepalese soldiers beating tibetan protestors and the speaker is talking about the chinese government response-giving the viewer the impression that the chinese soldiers are doing the beating-that goes beyond a simple mistake.

western media has a bias-it does not come directly from the government so i think many americans do not even realise it exists. it is more subtle than in china, but it exists.

i am just satisfied to get jinhan to admit it exists in china!

April 10, 2008 @ 9:58 pm | Comment

“As I said, I don’t mean examples of sloppiness – getting facts wrong and then correcting them, or not writing with enough perspective. I am talking about telling preconceived, bold-faced, completely intention lies. Not mistakes.”

I’m quite certain that most if not all of the lies by the Western media I listed are “preconceived, bold-faced, completely intention lies”, the same way you believe CCTV to be lying. There are just WAY TOO MANY of these “misreports” for them to be “accidental”. It is definitely a conscious process, at least in their dealings with China or leftists. It’s a conscious process encouraged by ideological differences and vulgar prejudices.

April 10, 2008 @ 10:06 pm | Comment

“i am just satisfied to get jinhan to admit it exists in china!”

I never said it didn’t exist. I’m not a Chinese nationalist and I consider myself a radical leftist political dissident.

April 10, 2008 @ 10:19 pm | Comment

Telling people there is no SARS in Beijing while knowing full well there was SARS in Beijing is a lie.

You can replace a few words with “WMD” and “Iraq”.. I agree with jinhan’s point about both exposing eachother’s lies.

I can’t find a single article on Tibet that isn’t written by a pro-Communist loonie or Blue Team/Free Tibet psychopath.

April 10, 2008 @ 10:57 pm | Comment

“It is definitely a conscious process…”

What’s the mechanism and what are your sources? Is there a controlling force that manipulates Der Speigel and the Spokane Valley Shopper? Le Monde and the Massapequa Gazette? Sounds pretty Dr. Evil to me, frankly.

We know how it works in China. The manipulation of the media by the propaganda bureau and the state council, acting through news agencies and broadcast danwei is quite well-known and documented.

But I have yet to see how this vast, global, multi-lingual conspiracy is coordinated, planned and maintained.

Perhaps Austin Powers should get on it for his next movie.

April 10, 2008 @ 11:00 pm | Comment

Rather I think it’s a lot of different interest groups working separately for similar goals that results in a high probability of bias showing up.

In America that would be Blue Team, Fundie Evangelicals, anti-Chinese groups, white racists and xenophobes, the Free Tibet people, animal rights activists, neocons, populists, ecoterrorists, so on and so forth.

The influence of all of these groups combined is quite significant.

April 10, 2008 @ 11:21 pm | Comment

In short, what do Nancy Pelosi, Shintaro Ishihara, and George Bush Jr. all have in common?

They hate China.

April 10, 2008 @ 11:22 pm | Comment

If you’re suggesting that the BBC, CNN, Fox News, Der Spiegel, and all the other ‘western’ media got together, or just independently decided they were going to try to manipulate everyone into believing the Chinese government was evil, you’re really overstating your case.
Fact is Chinese people seem to think that China’s a big deal around the world, but it’s not. You ask the average Anglophone what they know about the Chinese government, and they’ll most likely say, “Oh! I know them. They did Tiananmen Square right?” Likewise, you ask about Tibet, they’ll tell you that they saw the Dalai Lama on TV and figure Tibet is a nice, peaceful, spiritual type place.
So when reports started to trickle out of Tibet that protests were occurring, clashes between Tibetans and police were going on, and a media blackout was in effect, it was just easier to go with everyone’s stereotype. They needed to fit it into a 30 second news slot between what Obama’s minister said and the weather. Trying to paint this as an ‘anti-Chinese’ conspiracy is just too flattering to both China and to the various media outlets. Now if you want a real malicious spinning on an issue that mattered to a lot of people, consider the events surrounding Dan Rather’s departure from CBS (which for the record, I believe was a fuck-up too, but one caused by a little over-eagerness to further a political agenda).

I expect that CNN and the Beeb were both rather surprised to find that large numbers of Mainland Chinese were aware of there programming at all, and I think this little episode may have the positive effects of making them more cautious in their reporting, and also increasing the depth of their coverage of China.

As for the video, what I really like was how they put that picture of Gyatso and Asahara Shoko in no less than 5 times. What a dynamite argument that was.

April 11, 2008 @ 12:04 am | Comment

@Ferin
What makes you think they hate China? Seems like Bush has been as friendly to the PRC as an American president could get away with. If anybody’s got a cause to complain, I would think it would be the ROC.

April 11, 2008 @ 12:10 am | Comment

Richard: Didn’t your mother tell you not to talk with fenqing ?

April 11, 2008 @ 12:26 am | Comment

“”””””If you�re suggesting that the BBC, CNN, Fox News, Der Spiegel, and all the other �western� media got together, or just independently decided they were going to try to manipulate everyone into believing the Chinese government was evil, you�re really overstating your case.”””””””

Hm, well if they did all decide to take that stance they would be right! The CCP IS evil, so I hope whoever made that comment was right.

“”””Fact is Chinese people seem to think that China�s a big deal around the world, but it�s not.””””””

Lime, I think you might be way off. China is a big deal and a lot of people know it. Theres a significant amount of people who expect that China will basically rule the world soon enough. In a globalized wolrd, how could China not be a big deal, its such a big deal.

April 11, 2008 @ 12:33 am | Comment

ABout the Western media lying, well they definitely suck, Speigel might be good and maybe WSJ,,, anyway.

Has anyone seen the Corporation? Its a documentary, pretty good!

Monsanto is a company that sells crap to inject into cows to make them grow faster and produce more. They were a big advertiser with Fox…. And people found out that that drug causes cancer and stuff, and fox fired the two journalists who refused to say to the American people that is was all good and healthy.

Rupert Murdoch is a BIG SELL OUT LIAR, along with Fox and his other joke media.

I think most western media are extremely lazy and dont care about anything that matters. But I think the CCP media is worse because it is simple WAY MORE blatantly deceptive. Western is more subtly terrible, CCP is just so evil.

April 11, 2008 @ 12:41 am | Comment

Snow,
In real terms, I’m not saying China isn’t important, and as the world shrinks, it’s becoming more important. But think about the various Canadians you know, went to school with, work with, etc.. If you did a survey, how many famous Chinese people do you think the average Canadian could name? How many famous Chinese people who are not Gung Fu movie stars? How much Chinese history did you learn in highschool? How many Chinese loan words do people use on a day to day basis? How much time in an average news cast is devoted to China?
Then compare that to say, France, Russia, or Israel.

Like I say, these Olympics and all the Tibetan hoopla may have the positive effect of changing this to some limited extent. It’s my hope that we start paying more attention to both the good and bad in Asia.

April 11, 2008 @ 12:50 am | Comment

Ferin, the examples you gave in response to my challenge – WMDs in Iraq – cry out for comment. That was a government lie that the lazy media helped propagate. The media reported what they were told in good CCP-style, without questioning or dinning, or at least not nearly enough. But they did not intentionally lie. To the contrary and to their ultimate credit (though not a lot of credit), the major media, most notably the NYT, soon printed lengthy, humiliating and painful mea culpas and examined step by step how the government made its case and where they – the mass media – fell down, swallowing the government’s bullshit. You will really have to do much better than that. I am talking about the media calmly looking into the faces of its readers and willfully showering them not only with falsehoods, but falsehoods that could hurt them, perhaps even kill them. “No AIDS here in Henan province.” “No SARS in Guangdong.” etc. You know how the Chinese media works in time if crisis, at which point truth is its lowliest concern. Lie first, quiet the problem down, then come up with explanations latter.

Man, I’m exhausted. Bed time.

April 11, 2008 @ 1:05 am | Comment

@ Lime

So you are asking for “affirmative action” news broadcasts that give a specific amount of coverage to all things China?

THAT is the problem with China, its gov’t and the way people there are taught to think by that completely hosed up educational system.
To think that one country, specifically your country, deserves some sort of special treatment by other countries in news broadcasts simply highlights that “center of the world” mentality that China has had for so long and is still the basis for referring to everyone as “foreigners” and “foreign devils” even in other countries.

It is sad and laughable to see China, such a xenophobic, corrupt, backwards, smelly, polluted country try to look down its nose at the rest of the world. And to demand that China be the subject of “education” in the West?

Well, its good that today’s school children get to know more about China through the genocide Olympics, Darfur, North Korea and FLG and not just the cutsy stories I grew up with (like the “5 brothers” and all that crap about inventing so many things…btw the Koreans may have invented rice paper).
Maybe schools ought to focus on the CR to know the real China.

April 11, 2008 @ 1:13 am | Comment

“It’s a conscious process encouraged by ideological differences and vulgar prejudices.”

Are these prejudices really conscious? I agree that the Western media has a strong anti-China bias. Jump back to the late 80’s however, and journalists loved to paint a picture of China as a society on the verge of American-style democracy.

I blame it on intellectual and professional laziness. It’s much easier and profitable to identify a loose pattern (Now: Protest+China= Tiananmen– The 80’s: Economic Reforms+Communist Country= Eastern Europe) and churn out a formulaic article without adequate information than it is to wait until the “truth” becomes more clear.

April 11, 2008 @ 1:18 am | Comment

It is sad and laughable to see America, such a racist, genocidal, hedonistic, stupid, polluting country try to look down its nose at the rest of the world.

April 11, 2008 @ 2:54 am | Comment

@Nanheyangrouchuan

No, I really don’t want affirmative action news. I quite like the way that the corporate media in the free world concentrates on what their viewers care about or are interested in. I dislike government run media like the BBC that promote the interests and political views of a minority (although, hypocritically, I do regularly read the BBC because I share some of those minority interests).

My hope is that we, the public, will become more interested in Asia.

And it’s true that you might almost see the free world’s media (and indirectly the free world’s public) as doing the PRC a favour by giving only the scantest attention to things like the slave labour in Shanxi, the Falun Gong hunt, etc. etc. for so long.

I am willing to go so far as to say that if more about the PRC was common knowledge, I believe it would have been extremely unlikely that Beijing would have got the Olympics.

April 11, 2008 @ 3:11 am | Comment

@ferin
“It is sad and laughable to see America, such a racist, genocidal, hedonistic, stupid, polluting country try to look down its nose at the rest of the world.”

racist? I think there is a “not so white” candidate to presidency. Ever visited a US city an see the huge variety of people. Few other countries have it. I consider CH more racist.

Hedonistic? Do you have a problem with that?

Stupid? Very stupid thing to think, but you are not alone with that

Polluting? First increase your own energy efficiency coefficient.

Disclaimer. I am not US.

April 11, 2008 @ 5:17 am | Comment

@marc
“i am just satisfied to get jinhan to admit it exists in china!”

Hey! We are making some progress! 😉

April 11, 2008 @ 5:20 am | Comment

@Ecodelta, Ferin, et al.
“Hedonistic? Do you have a problem with that?”

Let’s talk about that. This hedonistic vs materialistic vs spiritualistic thing has raised it’s head a few times.
Who thinks that the former two cancel out the latter? And who thinks you can be all three at once?
Are any of the undesirable qualities?

April 11, 2008 @ 5:42 am | Comment

Lime, do you really wanna get into all that!? (-;

Whoever said this:

“”””””Rather I think it’s a lot of different interest groups working separately for similar goals that results in a high probability of bias showing up.”””””””

Isnt this a natural type of scenario? A lot of ‘interest’ groups oppose torture…. A lot of ‘interest’ groups oppose authoritarianism… A lot of ‘interest groups support freedom of the press and other fundamental freedoms like that, freedom of speach… So I would have to agree that the overall “interest’ in ‘humanitarian’ values does form an abstract force…

But this force is not opposed to some country, it is not opposed to some innocent peoples, it is not looking to loot your disparaged land thats for sure. This absract force seems to want justice.

I guess if you are indoctrinated by CCP you would not understand this concept of True Justice because you can not hold it in your hand and see it. Well, a lot of people in the world believe in PRINCIPLES that govern a civil humanity. Sometimes they REALLY stray from abiding by those principles, but I am just trying to share my perspective on the so called bias that western folks have against the Chinese REGIME. They are NOT WRONG FOR THAT, they are right, but they are very stupid if they think that every Chinese person is as bad as the regime.

April 11, 2008 @ 5:59 am | Comment

This is really important….

A 2007 Yale econometric study came to the conclusion that that the organs of detained Falun Gong practitioners have been systematically harvested for use in China’s organ transplant industry. Where is the expected outrage?

Part of the problem may reside in the term “Falun Gong.” For westerners, the exotic name has no real meaning. Like the name “Tutsi” from the Rwandan genocide, there is no intellectual or emotional connection — an exotic name from a dangerous place…

http://tinyurl.com/54vt7k

April 11, 2008 @ 6:03 am | Comment

I just wanted to point out that this video might very well be the first China-mainland-originated rap mv, or as they say in China – MTV!, expressing heavy political and social concerns, at least observed by someone with a lot of China exposure. Now if they just include fancy cars and barely clad ppmms, we would have a real business.

p.s. I really hope the world knows that the youthful generation of Chinese are overwhelmingly lighthearted individuals.

April 11, 2008 @ 11:40 am | Comment

“racist? I think there is a “not so white” candidate to presidency.”

for the first time in 400 years

p.s I am not from the PRC

April 11, 2008 @ 11:58 am | Comment

I am talking about telling preconceived, bold-faced, completely intention lies. Not mistakes. And there is a huge difference between the two. All media make mistakes. No respectable media lies. Even Fox News, which I detest, “only” distorts and misrepresents; they don’t lie. I suspect I won’t be successful in getting you to see the distinction.

I must respond to the above comment by Richard.

CCTV says “There is no SARS in Beijing”, and even Beijinger themselves laugh at those, literally no one, not a single Chinese person, believes when CCTV said “There is no SARS in Beijing”. Does that make CCTV a “worse” media than CNN? Absolutely it does – CCTV is a worse, ie, less skilled, media than CNN.

I am sure you have heard of this saying: “The highest form of propaganda is to mix truth with untruth.” If you just blatantly lie in the most blunt and childish fashion (eg, there’s no SARS in beijing, no student was killed on Tiananmen Square, etc), you should be immediately fired as the head of propaganda head, a PR manager, a press secretary, etc.

There’s HUGE arsenal of tools you can use to guide public opinion, misleading, misdirection, selective reporting, subtly editorialized language in news reports, use of certain phrases to induce certain psychological feelings in the reader, intentional inflections in the voice when reporting, deliberating confounding two issues to create confusion, etc, etc, etc. For example, FOX NEWS, I’m sure you hate FOX NEWS, why? In part because it’s very EFFECTIVE in propagating the Republican message and talking points. Why is it effective?

It’s effective PRECISELY because it does not say stupid shit like “All democrats are working for Osama Bin Laden”, or “There’s no Republican that engaged in a sex scandal”, or “Barack Obama is dangerous for America because he’s a Muslim”, etc. If it says those things like CCTV does, then it would NOT be effective, instead, it would be a LAUGHING STOCK.

It’s reporting, at a brief glancing, sounds very objective, very professional, its anchors all are very professional, its nightly talk shows have many liberal commentators, it devotes equal time to democratic candidates/guests. In fact, even if you look for it, it’ll be very difficult to find an example on FOX where it made a blatant lie like CCTV.

Yet, in many ways, FOX NEWS is much more effective as a propaganda tool than CCTV, do you not agree, and thus, to a Democrat, a much more dangerous and insidious organzition.

Therefore, CCTV has much more to learn from Fox News, from CNN, from the general Western Media. And this is not a sarcastic comment, I fully concede that Western media is decades ahead of Chinese media in terms of “shaping your message effectively.”

April 11, 2008 @ 12:24 pm | Comment

You ask the average Anglophone what they know about the Chinese government, and they�ll most likely say, �Oh! I know them. They did Tiananmen Square right?� Likewise, you ask about Tibet, they�ll tell you that they saw the Dalai Lama on TV and figure Tibet is a nice, peaceful, spiritual type place.

Of course, only if your average Anglophone matters. Brad Setser, or maybe somebody else, called Henry Paulson skipping a G-8 meeting and going straight to Beijing — right after he took his job, as a new CEO (to the financial America) going to see his largest shareholder.

Don’t get me wrong. I care a great deal more on how well I personally do, than how well China does. To do that, I need to be able to see the real truth, not the truth I want to believe.

April 11, 2008 @ 12:32 pm | Comment

Thanks Red Star, I am sure everyone agrees, CCTV should aspire to be more like Fox News so it can effectively fool everyone and perfect its propaganda – for the good of the people, of course.

April 11, 2008 @ 1:10 pm | Comment

Coh: I really hope the world knows that the youthful generation of Chinese are overwhelmingly lighthearted individuals.

I would tend to agree with you. They are great, at least the ones I know – bright, eager to learn, have a sense of humor, etc. And then I sometimes get surprised when this same light-hearted person suddenly morphs as soon as certain topics arise, like Taiwan and Tibet and Japan. The other day I was having lunch with an exceptionally lighthearted co-worker who told me how happy he and his friends were when the jets flew into the World Trade Center; finally, Belgrade was avenged.

I do love these people. But along with the lightheartedness and hipness there’s also a degree of indoctrination. And i realize there’s some indoctrination in all of us. What’s so interesting here is just how uniform it is, and how it seems everyone has a set of agreed-upon talking points when it comes to these subject. (Taiwan is a child that must return to its mother.)

April 11, 2008 @ 1:18 pm | Comment

@ferin
“racist? I think there is a “not so white” candidate to presidency.”
for the first time in 400 years”

You are a little out of the mark. Let´s make it 250 years. US is not so…ancient.

“p.s I am not from the PRC”
Ha ha ha. Good one!

April 11, 2008 @ 2:41 pm | Comment

“I do love these people. But along with the lightheartedness and hipness there’s also a degree of indoctrination.”

So do you feel all warm and fuzzy every time some little emporer brat tells you how happy they are about 9-11?

April 11, 2008 @ 2:44 pm | Comment

Does anybody know what the ‘Go back to Lhasa’ song (the ending credits song?) was and who it was by?

April 11, 2008 @ 2:47 pm | Comment

@HongXing
Why is the CCTV allowed to be so ludicrous?

Is the CCP not making too much a fool of themselves by promoting that kind of ridiculous propaganda?

Why couldn’t they make it more subtle/effective?

I really think CH need some kind of Al Jahzera+CNN+BBC+DW(Deutsche Welle)+Fox(?) kind of TV channel

Maybe CCTV internal structure is so hidebound and rusted that they cannot make it

April 11, 2008 @ 2:52 pm | Comment

@HongXing
Hhhmmm….. ones last thought about CCTV.
They should hire Jackie Chan to kick them out of their hidebound ways. 😉

Do they have a “proposals mail box” in CCTV?

April 11, 2008 @ 2:56 pm | Comment

Ha ha ha. Good one!

That’s my reaction when you claim you’re an American in broken English 😛

some indoctrination in all of us

Eh most people are totally brainwashed by one interest or another.

April 11, 2008 @ 11:45 pm | Comment

“Eh most people are totally brainwashed by one interest or another.”

When you are legally banned from owning a satellite TV dish in your own country and legally banned from private schools with foreign students, I’d say that is a much higher degree of brainwashing than what you might think, ferin.

Enjoying your life in Canada, eh?

April 12, 2008 @ 5:09 am | Comment

Yes, nanhe, Koreans invented everything. Dragonboat festival, fengshui, chopsticks…why, even the Chinese language! According to a certain VERY profitable church started by a Korean, everyone in the world should also speak Korean, since he is the true messenger of God and children should speak the language of their parents.
I think the only reason we don’t call out the Korean government and media for their silly brainwashing is they are theoretically our allies or at least not communists. Oh, and that they don’t matter much.

April 12, 2008 @ 8:27 am | Comment

Enjoying your life in Canada, eh?

The moose are a nuisance.

April 12, 2008 @ 8:42 am | Comment

“The moose are a nuisance.”
Heh.

April 12, 2008 @ 10:00 am | Comment

The music sucks, what they couldn’t get a deal with their stolen Western style music talking about other stuff?

April 12, 2008 @ 2:28 pm | Comment

@ @.@
“Yes, nanhe, Koreans invented everything….
…….why, even the Chinese language!”

Really!!??

😉

April 12, 2008 @ 3:32 pm | Comment

@ferin
“that’s my reaction when you claim you’re an American in broken English :P”

ma….englizh… iz… not.. vroquen!

April 12, 2008 @ 3:34 pm | Comment

@Lime

Go back to Lhasa is “»Øµ½À­Èø” by Ö£¾û Zheng Jun. I personally believes he is one of the most talented singer in China. His “»Ò¹ÃÄï” is my favourit.

April 13, 2008 @ 12:48 am | Comment

Thanks Jimmyshu!
Any idea how I could download it? I can’t seem to find it on my regular search engines and 我 的 中 文 不 好.

April 13, 2008 @ 2:32 am | Comment

try the following link:

http://live.cnnb.com.cn/k/walker/17_80.mp3

You’ll have to use a download manager like Flashget or Xunlei to download it to your pc. otherwise you may only listen to the song on the webpage.

IPR enforcement is getting much tighter in China. It’s not as easy to download mp3 songs as before. Usually you may only listen to a mp3 on the webpage but have to pay to download the mp3 as ringtone to your cellphone.

And Mr. Zheng Jun has been a forerunner in promoting copyright protection in the music industry, making it even harder to get his songs free of charge online.

April 13, 2008 @ 10:59 am | Comment

@ ecodelta
Really. Koreans have apparently petitioned and won something like cultural heritage rights from the UN for the dragonboat festival already, and are currently working on fengshui. (Mom shook her head and sighed at the UN while Dad had a good laugh.) I’m guessing chopsticks and the Chinese language are next, given some posts I’ve seen on the Net. Apparently, the logic goes that since the ancestors of modern day Koreans used to live around the area where Chinese was invented, it means that Koreans invented Chinese. (What do you mean many more Chinese could make the same claim? What do you mean China was an independent nation long before Korea was?) What’s really funny is that, by the same line of reasoning, you could pretty much come to the conclusion that the English language was born as a true international collaboration effort. After all, which continent can you think of that doesn’t have someone with some British ancestry living there, aside from maybe Antarctica?
Mom just shrugs “Korean antics” like these off, these days. She thinks Koreans are funny, in a weird way. When she went to college in China in the 70’s, she roomed with an ethnic Korean girl who seemed to always have so much laundry to do, and this was true for almost all of the ethnic Korean girls in their dorm building. Apparently ethnic Korean boys would just drop off their laundry and the girls they knew were just expected to wash everything for them. She was good friends with the girl and said the girl studied hard and was very “xian hui” (good housewife?), but also said she would’ve kicked any boy that tried that on her out of the door. =P

April 16, 2008 @ 6:02 am | Comment

@Jimmyshu
Thanks again. Firefox had no problem downloading that for me. Might have to wander down to Chinatown to actually buy some CDs to investigate his stuff further. I knew there had to be some good Chinese musicians out there beyond Cui Jian if I kept my eyes open.

April 16, 2008 @ 8:25 am | Comment

“Overnight, Western media *lost all credibility* to the majority of the Chinese, for it’s prejudices in reporting.”

Wrong; the Chinese people were instructed via their government’s media to question western media credilbility. And 99% of them bought it.

April 16, 2008 @ 2:30 pm | Comment

@stuart
Lol. That’s a good one. Now we would like to invite you to advance 20 years to 2008, when the Chinese know to not trust government media and know of ways to get around Internet censorship.
CCTV might have jumped on the bone like a starving chihuahua, but it was the “Western media” (speaking of generalities…sheesh) that messed up and dropped the juicy roasted turkey leg.

April 19, 2008 @ 11:07 am | Comment

“Wrong; the Chinese people were instructed via their government’s media to question western media credilbility. And 99% of them bought it. ”

this is the reason ppl like you would never understand what’s happening in China, and never contribute anything positive to the relationship between China and the west, the only thing you could ever do is whining while hugging trees, and soon get thrown under the bus.

April 20, 2008 @ 5:34 pm | Comment