China's reaction

Build a wall

The Year of the Rabbit starts badly

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i take issue with this article for two reasons:
The economist once again applied its double standard in examining china’s actions and similar acts from those of its western allies, case in point here-Israel. the author here blatantly equate the non-reporting of the Egypt news by china’s "state-media" (emphasis added here) as a form of repression of freedom of press, while Israeli prime minister could openly instruct his minister to not talk about the same matter in public without a reprimand from the economist. (please read Bad news for the Jewish state The economist reasoned such an instruction by the Israeli prime minister was a measure to prevent potential chaos within Israel, but fail to see that china could have the similar worry as well, or failed to understand currently in china, people are busy celebrating the spring festival--no one in china care about miseries happening elsewhere in the world, Chinese people just want to enjoy their holidays.

Second, for those who so quickly jumped to the conclusion that china walled-out the recent and on-going protest in Egypt should consider the following: there are state run media and privately run media in China, no reporting by the chinese state media does not mean Chinese are being barred from writing or even talking about it. However I don’t blame this misperception on the economist, after all, the economist could only check the new on the state run media because other privately-owned news outlets seldom have an English version, and when the state-run media failed report anything, economist will have no choice but to conclude that china has walled out the news and proclaim “the evil china violated the freedom of press.” We will be asking way~~ to much from the economist to hire people who can read Chinese to type in Egypt in Chinese and to conduct a simple verification. And of course the Chinese official newspaper would have evil agendas not to report certain news, just like the news about massive destruction weapons in Iraq, it were CNN and other major western media’s agenda to report that Iraq had them.



The only propaganda machine at work here is The Economist.


Headlessly Running Around:

"I should point out that the news and images distributed by western agencies have proven time and again not to be free of censorship (they choose what to report) and falsification (making things up when they don't see what they want to see)"

"western agencies" is a blanket term, designating what? There is no such monolithic entity. Name names, times, specific offences, then we know what you're talking about. Are you seriously telling us that the BBC, CNN, AFP, Reuters, Deutsche Press-Agentur, AP, Australian Associated Press (I could continue and name the press agencies of several dozen more countries) are all engaged in a giant global conspiracy to censor and falsify the news in exactly the same way? That strikes me as just a little bit unlikely.

And if you don't like the news that western countries produce, then how about Al-Jazeera? Or how about Itar-Tass? What about Yonhap? Or Press Trust of India?

Nope. None of these will do. The only news on Egypt that's fit for Chinese citizens to read is produced by Xinhua. No other news service in the world - Western, Middle-Eastern, Arab, Russian, Japanese, Indian, South American or African, can be trusted. Need we say more?


@ X.D.L.

This is an article in a newspaper about strict press censorship in China – so I am sorry but I’ve no idea what, if any, relevance this incoherent monologue has to the either the article or the thrust of my last post.

@ Headlessly Running Around

I understand the point you’re trying to make but it irks every time I hear the term “Western Media” as if the tens of thousands of local and national news agencies of dozens of different nations are somehow linked and all espousing the same opinion. What most people tend to mean by the term is the “Anglo-American” represented by the major news agencies of these nations, but even here there are major divergences in practice and opinion.


It exactly is. Very few news of Egyptian situation on CCTV but just news of Spring Festival. Beijing loves "harmony" even if it is just so-called much more than any tiny "cacophony" it may hear.


@Headlessly Running Around

"Perhaps Xinhua news agency will release more information once they have learned how to falsify (Photoshop) videos and pictures like Western media do when they report events in China."

They don't have to, they just learn how to take videos from Western movies from CCTV. No need to go to Western media. Just take clips from Black Hawk Down and say this is the rioting in Egypt. Then find a Arab Dictator in a B-Grade American action movie and pass it off as Mubarak. The Chinese public won't know the difference, all Arabs look the same to them !!


The Chinese press is reporting about it, its just not in a big way, considering that its Chinese New Year. But the rest of the non-Muslim Asia gives it as much coverage as they do in the Western press, including the likes of Singapore and Thailand.

Personally, I think they the Chinese press should not let politics / concerns about stability get into the way of reporting something more extensively that could effect them alot more than many other countries. A country like New Zealand could not give a rat's ass of what happens to Egypt. If the Suez Canal is shut down it would affect China more than anyone else. The largest consumer of Saudi Arabian oil is China. What would happen if the crazies take over Saudi Arabia and start funding Uighurs in Xinjiang. Unlike the US, China actually has a Muslim unrest in its own borders.

Headlessly Running Around

You ask: " Why does it not trust its own people to look with an unvarnished, uncensored eye at Egypt...". While not arguing that China should censor its news, I should point out that the news and images distributed by western agencies have proven time and again not to be free of censorship (they choose what to report) and falsification (making things up when they don't see what they want to see).


China has good reason to fear instability, given the history of the past two centuries. The economy has grown faster in the past two decades than any other major country in the world. That couldn't have happened without political stability. Growth dipped only briefly after the Tiananmen Square protests were crushed. In the intervening years, China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Its modern cities, with their ring roads, highways, and fast-sprouting subway lines, compare favourably with any in the first world.

Given that the Communist Party has such a good story to justify its continued hold on power, why is it so afraid to tell it? Why does it not trust its own people to look with an unvarnished, uncensored eye at Egypt and say: This is not for us. We have seen the fruits of political stability. We are not going to allow our country to descend into chaos again.

It is a paradox. We read a lot these days about the current mood of hubris and triumphalism in China. In the wake of the global financial crisis, China has become more assertive about the superiority of its own system of government over those of a seemingly decadent and declining West. So we are told.

Then, why would a confident, assertive China be afraid to let its citizens read about events in a little-known, faraway Arab country? What possible threat could such obscure news pose to such a successful, popular regime?

These two views of China don't add up. If China is a confident, stable, emerging superpower run by brilliant technocrats, why then is it behaving like a brittle, paranoid, secretive clique that's afraid of its own people?


Egypt is more like China in 1989 than China today.

The Egyptions are protesting against exclusion from socio-economic development, which they cannot influence because they are excluded from the political process. They want democracy because through it they stand a chance of being able to share in the benefits of development, rather than having wealth and opportunity captured by the elite and connected.

China doesn't have this issue so much now. After 1989, it has worked hard to include its populous in socio-economic development, lifting many millions out of poverty and constraining to an extent the type of potentially unacceptable inequality seen in rapidly developing places such as Brazil, Russia, Cambodia for example...and coming into being in Egypt and Tunisia.

It would be a mistake to think the needs/wants of the people in China are parallel to those in Egypt and Tunisia.



If I were the CCP, I wouldn't pay a cent to have people comment under The Economist. I mean, why would the Chinese government care about what the average American Joe thinks? It's not like Obama is here and might be persuaded. Also, people who are American-educated and write decent English (like me) probably need a lot more 50 cents to do this for a job. In fact, I have no idea why I do this without any payment. Probably because I derive utility from making fun at people who don't speak a word of Chinese but somehow think they understand the "misery" of Chinese people caused by their oh-so-unpopular government. But really, I absolutely AM interested in this 50 cents army thing. I reckon if I get 50 cents every time I laugh at ill-informed people, then the CCP owes me a LOT of money.


These few days past, I haven't been on China's biggest microblog site (, following someone named "Live from Egypt", reading mini blog posts and looking at photos. I haven't been arguing with someone named Ning Caishen about why he slandered the Chinese embassy in Cairo. I haven't been discussing with others, still on the same site, about the dire fate of museums in Cairo. I haven't been on forums big as Tianya and small as a password-secured little site and discussing with many what happened in Egypt. That's it, I must have been hallucinated all this!! Well, if a "free" press from a "democratic" nation says I don't know about what happened in Egypt, then it must be true! Everything I think I saw on Chinese websites about Egypt, all those people I think I shared conversations, they, they.... I know, they are like, images conjured up by the Matrix!!!

You know, you can still report the truth and put your own spin on it? How about this: Though the evil communist party of China tries to censor news about Egypt by quietly manipulating search results, vibrant discussions about this world-shattering event still dominate Internet in China, especially in big forums and on social networking sites. Angry accusations of Chinese embassy's inaction fly, and deep thoughts about implications for China abound. Perhaps, today's Cairo will be tomorrow's Beijing.

See? You REALLY don't have to LIE in order to spew out ideological bullshit. Because being evangelical about your holy "democracy" and "freedom" while lying just looks hypocritical. You can totally make it somewhat true, AND still spell out the rest of the crap you are so eager to sell. And people like me would have less materials to attack, right?


The wall should be torn down on this event, absolutely.

So ordinary Chinese could know how the #1 hypocrite in the world behave--by being a proud ally for dictators(yes, a plural with an "s") while being the self-claimed "Freedom" and "Human rights" crusader at the same time, all of which has been going on for decades and all of which depends on the self-interests of the US.


What if I mention 9/11 as two buildings collapse after aeroplanes collide on them, and publishes it on thousands of websites. I didn't lie about fact, but it by no means a responsible news reporting.



search did yield results of protest, but pay attention to the content of the article.

Egypt protest is arguably the biggest event happening in the world right now. However, there is no in-depth analysis, no causal reasoning; most articles are simply mentioning a protest as if a little hiccup in Middle-East.


This article is unfortunatly correct. I found that the news was more or less blanked out regarding Tunisia last month too.

Now we just have to wait for the 50 cent army to find this article.


I was going to say 'Get ready for a tide of angry Chinese comments, refuting the article,' but then I realized that the Chinese can't see it, because it includes the word "Egypt."


When the first time I read about Tunsia, I was thinking the semblance of such regime to China, thus the fall of Ben Ali both shocks and excites me. Meanwhile, I knew such news will not travel or play significantly down in China. When I talked to Dad three-four days after Egypt protest erupted, I wasn't surprised that he barely know anything about it. He knows more about the scandal of Berlusconi than this profound world changing event. Later that day, I did a Chinese search on this, only scattered trivia came up.

The Economist is right on target on its analysis. The only impression Chinese will have on the protest is chaos (and the value of "stability"), but not people's will and fight for freedom and democracy. The horror makes me shiver whenever I think about this.



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