The Western Media Lies and Ruth Rants

I had this interesting conversation with my guide yesterday. He was telling me that he felt the world was against China. He sighted several examples of how the Western media has said terrible things about China. Most recently there was some kind of parallel made between China's government and Hitler. I didn't get the details. These things are taken very personally by the Chinese people, who apparently have a ton of nationalism. He asked if I heard of various rallies around the world in support of China (re: the Olympics) and I said that I hadn't, but that I hadn't been looking and I wasn't surprised that there was people around the world supporting China. In SF, when the torch was there, there were large numbers who showed up to support and protest the Olympics in China.

Anyway, he was pretty passionate about the fact that the world is misinformed because the Western media lies to us and we don't understand what is going on. He went on about how these Tibetan monks had killed and burned a bunch of people and did I know about it? No I didn't. So, I went and did some reading,which is some what hard to do here considering the access issues. I decided to check out this site that he asked me to look at www.anti-cnn.com. A really good thread if your interested is at http://www.anti-cnn.com/forum/en/thread-18-2-1.html
There is a guy in the US and a two Guys here in China debating back and forth. It's an interesting read if you have the time or inclination.

Anyway, I have to say I am surprised at the effectiveness of the brainwashing. I am not claiming for one minute that Americans have never been lead astray or that Media is unbiased. There are tons of things that have been effectively hidden from the American people, though I think it is getting harder to do this with the Internet.

As a current example, I was shocked to see the numbers of Americans (sorry if you are one of them) who bought into the sound bites of news during the beginning of the Iraq war. I remember hearing some of the crap that was broadcast-- IE: that stupid picture the showed where there was for sure "weapons of mass destruction" and thinking, how in the hell can anyone with an average intelligence be falling for this? Or how about the crazy link that was suddenly made between September 11th (which we bombed Afghanistan for) and Iraq? We had to go into Iraq because we THOUGHT there was weapons of mass destruction and we wanted to find them. Yet, when Korea told us- hey we are going to make a bomb...what did we do about it? Nothing, apparently we'd rather fight off a country that might have weapons of mass destruction then one we know for sure has a bomb. The reasoning just doesn't add up. Despite everything, Americans overwhelmingly supported the war and EVEN reelected the wonderful man who got us into the mess and has since made a further disaster of our nation and economy.

Where was I? Sorry for the rant, but is is important to note that people do tend to believe what they want, not necessarily the facts. Oh yeah, china....

Here they have an excuse for being misinformed. Currently news sights like the BBC, CCN, even wikapedia and even my blog are ban in China! Even if these news sites were not ban they don't have access to China therefor there are only two views that the Chinese people can read, the one from their government and if there lucky enough to get access, the one the rest of the world is trying to piece together with only partial information. It is no wonder that when they hear an entirely different account of what happened from outside that they would question it. The thing I can't understand is, why would they even believe anything in the news here? The Chinese government has every reason to lie and no incentive to tell the truth.

I explained this to my guide. Also, I wanted to know, why would the western media want to make up lies about the Chinese people or government? I asked, unless you have a friend who saw the monks killing people or you saw it yourself how can you believe it? And if the Chinese government doesn't have anything to hide why not let the outside media in? Even if it is not American, English or German media? What about the Indian or Malaysian media?

Oh, I found out why there are no beggars or homeless people in Shanghai. It turns out that you actually have to be born in Shanghai to live in Shanghai without permission. So you get issued this ID card and that card only entitles you to go certain places without permission. This is one way the government is hoping to keep the poor people in the country side farming and the business people here. It seems that it really kind of creates a system where you really get stuck in a certain economic pattern unless you are lucky enough to be in one of the cities where the economy is booming.

On a side note: I read today that breathing the air in Beijing, where we will go tomorrow, is equivalent to smoking 70 cigarettes a day.