Western Media Blackout on Positive Chinese developments
It is impossible to get a clear picture of China from the western media coverage of this country. The self-censorship of the western world's capitalist media is far greater and more pervasive than the state censorship sometimes practiced in China. Here we *do* get some picture of the various developments in U.S. economy, polity, and foreign affairs. Over there, however, only endless stories about censorship, human rights issues, dangerous toys, and the like in China are published. In general, the only positive stories feature 'China is a great place to make money'. It's not that these stories are all untrue; like all countries, China has it's problems. There *are* human rights and corruption issues in china, though some of the stores are exaggerated or untrue. The problem is that is **all** that is reported. It is much as if only the U.S. patriot act, the rights abuses under it, the previously secret CIA prisons in Europe, and the large number of homeless and impoverished Americans were publicized, and all the rest of U.S. affairs, whether good or bad, were left in the dark of night. Here's a telling example: The Chinese government 'Project to build a new socialist countryside' is a key part of the new five year plan for China, and is impacting the lives of one billion Chinese farmers. It features new social welfare protections, medical insurance, upgraded access to medical care, free public school education for children, greater economic opportunity, and generally upgraded standards of living and life opportunities for farmers . By any reasonable standard, such a story, involving the lives of a large proportion of the world's population, one billion people, has very high news value. Curious to see how western media would report this story, shortly after the project was announced I searched on 'China AND New Socialist Countryside; in Google News (which indexes 4500 news sources, mostly western): http://news.google.com/news?q= . But I got only a paltry 52 links, and most of them were from Chinese English language sources like ChinaDaily. However, when I searched on the same day on 'China AND human rights' I got 5,185 links, mostly for the same few stories, carried over-and-over in thousands of periodicals. This experience underscored for me the filtered - and unduly negative - version of Chinese reality which is conveyed to western people by their media. Moreover, many more examples of western media self-censorship on China could be adduced, such as: * The failure to properly inform people about China's highly innovative 'Scientific Concept of Development'; this concept is arguably the world's most advanced economic policy, because it seeks to replace one-sided emphasis on 'economic growth' with a concept of wholistic or balanced development which fully takes into account economic, social, and ecological concerns. * The semi-blackout on the Chinese government drive to turn China into an 'Innovation Soceity', * The new concept of China as a "Harmonious society' within a "harmonious world' based on respect for social and cultural diversity; * The new turn to a "green China, which includes development of the world's first GDP to include ecological criteria and construction of four new model eco-cities; * China's very friendly and mutually beneficial current relations with all of its neighbour countries, with Africa, and with Latin America; All the best, Eric Sommer, Beijijng "True development puts first those that society puts last." -Mahatma Gandhi "Dare to be naive." - Buckminster Fuller "Work for the world." - Karl Marx "A loving heart: In all the world this state of mind is best." - ADM CEO --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.
