It seems China really does not want "western propaganda" to interfere with the official Chinese one.

The best recipe against propaganda is as many foreign observers as possible and messages from local people to the world. Interestingly China did not like neither and cut off as many connections as possible between Tibet and the rest of the world.

The western media can either invent a story or reprint the offical party line of China. I won't trust the one nor the other one a second.

But if China would say the truth and act according to the law and in a deescalating way, it would not have the need to cut off any information coming from Tibet. For me it looks pretty like the Chinese government just acts faced with riots as a dictatorship is used to act, but for some reasons its ashamed of it and does not want that proves for that way of acting makes it into the international sphere.

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"Every country gets the cuisine it deserves"

I agree with that. You would be insane to consider CNN to be mainstream here in Europe. Didn't they report in favor of the Iraq war innitially as well?
Europe is a major part of the West. American news channels don't dominate Europe.

Like that or not, it does not matter what influence Europe has in the Far east, you were talking about the western media, not about influence and to ignore the media that dominate Europe is much but not representative for "the west".

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"Every country gets the cuisine it deserves"

Including Chinese media?

I think that Lad has been banned, Lizarddust. However it would be better to speak of Chinese medium since there aren't that many...

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"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" - Ulysses, James Joyce.

The problem is that United States and the government in Taipei, also Japan, have many programs that are designed to creating social instability, racial tension, economic panic and provocative rumors hoping to topple Chinese government. Many public and many covert. Under these artificial manipulations, no people in China trust western media even a little bit. China will always question the motives of western media. It is not NEWS MAKE MEDIA, it is MEDIA MAKES NEWS. That is why in many cases, the function of western media is to escalate and further provoke the situation, not trying to pacify them. The examples are numerous. Nobody is going to spend billions of dollars to topple Austria, but many are doing that to create social instability in China. The most notorious is NEC of America. Taipei's fundings are mostly covert.

Another factor is that every Chinese is a strategist, and we find everything is a conspiracy. I have watched CNN, FOX and BBC a lot. Everyday, I can pick out several cases that the media manipulate graphic, sound and linguistic effects to try to manually shape people's mentality. Different western media might manipulate differently for the issues they cover. But we can see that when it comes to China, all western media manipulate toward one direction. Chinese media of course do the same thing. But we are pretty confident that Chinese media manipulate for China's purpose, and western media manipulate against China's purpose. If you really want objective information about China. Add both western media and Chinese media, then divide it by two.

Hope this answers your question perfectly.

Sensationalism is nothing specific to western media, you can find it at all free media.

Do you really believe its only the evil westerners who cause the tensions in China? In Austria not even long ago, we also knew whose fault it was that everything went bad for us, you know.
China has a nice potential of home grown conflicts. Maybe some foreign powers will try to exploit that, but dont forget that the West can not be interested in an imploding China either. It would really make a fine global economic depression currently.

You do not really think that there exists somewhere the one and true objective media, do you? I disagree with your formula below though. Chinese media is under considerable censorship, western media is at best under self censorship. If however in the west a station is moving too far away from reality, the competition might have fun at ruining the others credibility.
While that does not happen on daily basis in the west, I don't really believe it ever happens in China.

I also think you confuse the interest of China with the interest of your government. Thats not necessarily the same.

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"Every country gets the cuisine it deserves"

China has lots of potential social problems that western governments can exploit. In many cases, they do not necessarily CAUSE the problem, but ESCALATE the problem. This tendency among western media against China is especially obvious when you compare western media's coverage of China and India. India has far more social conflicts. Many many more people died in Indian conflicts. They have Muslim-Hindu conflicts, Kirshmir conflicts, Hindu-Christian conflicts, Communist stronghold in the east and Nationalist stronghold in the west, Maoist rebellions, Northeastern Seperatism, etc. But becasue India is totally submissive to western ideology, western media never escalate and provoke Indian conflicts. Fundamentally, it is cultural hegemony, that western people cannot tolerate any ideology that is NOT submissive to their own ones. They will sabotage it as long as there is chance.

I do not think there is any true and objective media. Several European media even posted pictures of Nepal police suppressing Tibetans, and labelled them as Chinese police suppressing Tibetans. This kind of direct and obvious lies widely exist in western media's report on China, not to mention indirect and hidden manipulations.

It is not necessarily the same. However, only Chinese people have enough knowledge, and are qualified to decide if the interest of China agrees with the interest of Chinese government. Whatever censorship that Chinese government may have, Chinese people have 4000 years of history of overthrowing their governments when the interest of the government obviously deviate from the interest of the majority. Foreign "help" is rarely welcomed.

Sorry but that sounds quite paranoic. Riots and conflicts in India also get reported. That China gets currently perhaps extra coverage time was its own wish, after all, it was them who wanted the olympic games, and everyone knows that with the olympic games you also get a focus in foreign news coverage.

I simply don't buy this evil westerners cause Chinese internal conflicts theory.

I haven't seen such a mislabelling anywhere in the media I read and watch regularely. It can't be therefore as all encompassing as you claim. But if it accured somewhere it rather speaks of total incompetence of the affected media station rather than an evil conspiracy.

That does not sound special at all. Most countries inhabitants think that way. Many of them err however as far as it goes to their capability to overthrow a dictatorship.

Of course no one knows how life in China is better than the Chinese, but this Gleichschaltung in media coverage won't lead to good informed Chinese outside of their direct sphere of experience.

A large number of countries in Europe have been dictatorships not that long ago, many people know here therefore the difference between the free media and controlled media out of first hand and how the latter in fact distorts the reallity not always unsuccessfully, by far more than the former.

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"Every country gets the cuisine it deserves"

That is OK. We don't force our own opinions on others.


The various dictatorships from different cultural backgrounds, have their own philosophical support. For instance, there is no objective "Reality". Buddhism will tell you that everything is distorted through your physical being. Your whole life is a dream, sailing through all distortions. Confucianism and Taoism also have lots of theories, but I will omit this time. Relativism is probably the word that is familiar to westerners. Agains, we do not expect westerners to research in eastern ideology, and vice versa.

I guess thats the kind way of saying, you dont believe a single word of it, but thats no problem either because I don't force any opinion of mine on others either.

There is a saying here that there exist various "truths" as well. I think that goes into a similar direction.

I lack to see however how this should make a difference to the wise saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Its not like you could not find also in the asiatic sphere dictatorships that act clearly against the interest of the people and only for their own, and still the people can't overthrow them, even if they try.

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"Every country gets the cuisine it deserves"