Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

America in the local paper

Yes, Chinese people make snowmen too. In fact, several pictures of them made the front page in a newspaper here. The newspaper very cutely picked out five, all with different faces. One was a cat, another had the face of a melted alien, and one had a mustache made out of two dried leaves.

I've been meaning to read the local papers more often, both as a way to learn more about China and improve my reading abilities. (It seems a bit ironic that I rely on The New York Times and other foreign publications to get my news on China.)

Well as I flipped through the frontpage, I instead came across a half-page article about America. The headline: "Every 31 minutes a murder occurs in America."

The article is about a report on America's human rights record the Chinese government recently published. In the center was this rather imposing picture:

The article goes on to detail all the problems in America, and does it quite negatively: "A rape happens every 5.8 minutes" , "Every year 190,000 race-related hate crimes occur." Early on, the article says while America will criticize other countries about their human rights record, it does little to fix its own problems. One subheadline reads, "America's 'Human Rights' hypocrisy."

Why such a harsh and one-sided article? Apparently America's State Department issued its report on global human rights and basically gave China a poor rating. In response, the government released its own report on America.

I can see where the Chinese government is coming from, (yes, America does have its many problems) and the facts it reported are accurate from the cursory Internet searches I did. But man, what a crappy article. (Frankly, America is way better in its human rights record than China, i.e. the right to vote and the freedom of speech).

Such a blatant piece of state-sponsored propaganda. What was strange, but a bit laughable was how the picture shown above isn't of a Guantanamo Bay detainee, but of a protester from Turkey. I suppose if you don't read the caption, one might think people in America are being tortured on the streets. It does make me wonder more about what Chinese people think of Americans and how they are covered in the press.

I only know that it sucks a little to live in a country where the government controls the information. There's been a few times where The New York Times webpage has been blocked. When Obama's inauguration speech was broadcasted on TV, the government censored small portions where Communism was negatively mentioned. They did so by not translating what the new President said. The government won't even let 'The Dark Knight' from being shown at theaters, supposedly because the evil accountant guy in the movie is Chinese. (The film, however, can be bought on bootlegs DVDs anywhere).

Just one of those things that you hope China will change one day. Like making sure you can safely drink milk here. I guess I'll have to be prepared to be slightly outraged whenever I read the local papers here.