According to several state-controlled Chinese media outlets, including China Daily and the China Tibet Information Center, thousands of Chinese people are signing an online petition against bias in the Western media. In particular, the petition responds to the Western media’s coverage of the violence in Lhasa. China Daily translates the site’s grievances and pitch for support as follows:
“Violent crimes of beating, smashing, looting and arson broke out in Lhasa in early March, but Western media organizations such as CNN and BBC have churned out untrue and distorted reports of the event. Please sign your name here to lodge your strong protest.”
According to the China Daily, on 4/5/08, the online petition site had received about 1.14 million signatures. Today, 4/8/08, only 3 days later, the site claims to have 2.83 million signatures. If these figures are correct, and we assume a linear progression, the site gathered approximately .53333 million signatures per day - about half a million signatures per day. China Daily claimed that 20% of these signatures on Friday came from the U.S. Since I cannot read Chinese, and BabelFish is buggy, I was unable to confirm this signature distribution statistic on the website. Moreover, it is not clear how we could confirm that the signatures are authentic. We have no way to verify that the names on this list are attached to real people.
The online petition site was written in Chinese, largely limiting its signees and readership to Chinese speakers. Why would China create a petition that criticizes the Western media in a language difficult for the Western media to understand? Because the the primary target of the petition is not the Western media; it is the Chinese people. Neither of the English versions of the state-controlled media outlets provided links to the online petition. Both indicated that a link could be found on Sina.com, another state-approved Chinese media portal. Apparently, Sina.com hosts the petition, but links to the petition cannot be found on the English version of the website. I found the link to the portal on a physics website, PhysOrg.
To view the petition site in Chinese, click here.
To view the petition site in English (translated by BabelFish), click here (note: BabelFish’s translation may limit site functonality).
8 responses so far ↓
1 Evangelique Zhao // Apr 16, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I can’t answer your question of why the site is in Chinese instead of English, but I’ve signed my name thru that site; I’m a real person and I’m disgusted by the bias of western media against China. The recent Tibet thing is not the first time that the western media had reported distorted news… that’s why I have problems trusting NPR, CNN on international news.
2 Will Riley // Apr 16, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Thank you Evangelique for your comment. In your view, how does the bias in the Chinese media differ from the American media?
3 Evangelique Zhao // Apr 17, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I get my news from different sources because I speak more than one language. As far as I can tell from the daily news that I get from different sources, the bias in the Chinese media is less than the bias in the Western media. The information matches more across sources. Another thing is Americans seems to like to blame others for their own mistake, and they often take things out of context which leads to misconceptions.
Chinese is just 56 groups of minorities, there’s really no majority. Around the 1950s, China took control over Tibet and banned slavery (Communism doesn’t allow slavery since the belief is that it would be a classless society). Eversince then, China had continuesly put in billions to reconstruct Tibet. So, here’s my confusion– Tibet wants to be ‘free’ so that they can be slaves again? okay–I’m fine with that.
4 Will Riley // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Evangelique, again, thank you for posting your thoughts and analysis. Your views are very new to me. Can you tell me more about slavery in Tibet? Also, what percentage of the Chinese population is Han? Finally, you mentioned that you get your news from different sources; which specific sources do you use?
5 Evangelique Zhao // Apr 19, 2008 at 9:43 am
Han, I think it’s about ~90% or something—however, we don’t speak the same dialogue, don’t believe in the same religion (although most are buddist), and have different cultures; and therefore I don’t consider Han a majority. To give you an example, my grandmother and I are both Han, we’re from the same providence, I speak cantonese, she speaks tai-san, I don’t have a clue on what she’s saying most of the time. China’s very regional, if you don’t live in the same area, chances are–you can’t really call yourself to be in the same group. When a Chinese ask another Chinese what they are, they would ask where they are from, and if it’s the older generation, they would ask where one’s parents are from, some even grandparents. And all of this is because of the regional sector that Westerner don’t understand.
Slavery in Tibet, I’ve heard from a lecture thru a radio station as well as via an internet source (can’t remember where though). But the radio station is AM 1430 in the Los Angeles Area, it was from a history professor. However, if you were to research it, I’m sure you can find it on the internet.
I get my news from NPR, CNN, CCTV, Guangzhou news, JADE in HK, Asia Station in HK, channel newsasia, SingTao (US version), and with an occasional Taiwanese news and other newspapers. (note: HK’s media are not screened by the chinese government)
Okay, finally, thanks for your interest in the topic, but it’s really not my intention to write a posting every other day. Please research on your own.
6 Will Riley // Apr 19, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Evangelique, I know you’re probably too busy to write every other day to this blog, but I appreciate your public correspondence. Writing to you on this blog is one way I’ve been able to research this topic. I will definitely research the history of slavery in Tibet as you mentioned. I found Michael Parenti’s piece, Friendly Fuedalism, to support your claim that slavery existed in Tibet prior to 1959:
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
Parenti also points out that “to denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime [of Tibet].” He argues that Chinese liberation does not imply economic freedom. According to Parenti, “most Chinese live close to the poverty level or well under it, while a small group of newly brooded capitalists profit hugely in collusion with shady officials.”
7 Evangelique Zhao // Apr 23, 2008 at 8:04 pm
^__^ This will be my last post. A small group of capitalists that has most of the money while others have close to nothing–that’s pretty much everywhere in the world(lets be honest here). Poverty, sickness, death, corruption, etc, are the type of things that exists everywhere across any country and policy. But I see your point, and I agree that there is a big gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. But I don’t think ‘most’ Chinese live in poverty level though.
As China is going through rapid developments, there will be problems associated with the ‘growing’. And there’s improvements from day to day, and I see it everytime I go back for a visit. There’s actually a lot more transparency than Westerners think there is, ’shady officials’ are almost a thing of the past. (’almost’–, not quite yet ‘a thing of the past’, but China’s getting there) And currently, those that are higher up are great officials and they are loved because they do think in terms of the country and they are trying very hard to eliminate corruption.
The Chinese government is concerned about the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. As a proud Chinese, I do believe that my country will make every effort it can make to resolve issues, as the transparency of decision making have become inevitable in this day and age. But back to the point that I’m trying to make when I started the first post–It’s really unnecessary to demonize China or any other country when there’s no understanding of the context/background, and/or worse yet, no indepth research being done. CNN’s misleading cropping and the use of wrong pictures with a different subject matter—- saying that it was a unintended mistake is quite degrading. Being the media, I’m sure that they understand what an impact it would be, and have it happen so often on the subject matter of China is kind of hard to believe that it’s unintentional. A picture is worth more than a thousand words, but they’ve just turned it into ‘a thousand words of lie’– I will make sure that I don’t trust what I see from now on in.
And this will be my last post. ^___^
8 Hui // May 2, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Hi, Will. If you are really interested in getting to know China, please come to http://www.anti-cnn.com. There are people from all over the world using the site and offering their opinions and asking questions about China. There, you don’t have to worry about whether people there are brainwashed as most westerners assume they are.
Since I’m already here, I might as well offer some of my own opinions about this. Just a little background about myself. I came to live in the US at the age of 16 and now I’m already 31. So when many westerners so admantly believe that most Chinese (those in China) are brainwashed by the government, I consider my own brain has been counter-washed (fairly so) by American media because I grew up reading news from such places as the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and CNN. That’s also how I learned English over the years. And of course, I also read news in Chinese. I read from different sources, not just those from China. Just to give an example, I read Worldjournal (a Taiwanese newpapers in New York), wenxuecity.com (based in the US), and a handful of them in Taiwan.
About the Tibet incident, western media are really wrong, not a little bit wrong. There are enough evidences that they deliberated fabricated news with fake evidences. My personal view is that this has a lot to do with the fact that they give no credit to the Chinese government. So anything happens the government is 100% at fault. They used such words as “allegedly”, “what they claimed”. etc and etc, when they quote from a Chinese new sources about anything released by the government. And as a result, everyone who supports the government is brainwashed. This is the view of those biased media. In fact, I just read someone’s comment on an article about China, he (she) said that whoever says well of the Chinese government has a family member what’s at gun point. I mean, use the logic, this just does not make sense. The Chinese government has faults, just like every government in the world. The government made mistakes in the mistake, but it’s going in the right direction now. Managing to feed 1.3 billion people is not an easy task.
I’ve witnessed great changes in China over the past decades. Every time I went back to China, new things happen and the changes are positive. My hometown is a small village in the east. It used to be very poor, but no more. And people living there are very satisfied and peaceful. Everyone there has access to the Internet and they are free to travel around the country, even abroad. Probably I talked too much, but as I say, I wish many westerners can visit China during Olympics. This is the only way to get to know the country and the people.
Please come to anti-cnn.com and you will learn so much about China.
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