PandaPassport.com – China Blog

Like any story, there are two sides to the whole Tibet/Olympics issue, and I ask for a that people outside of China consider looking at the Chinese point of view for a moment.

There’s an online petition (“>en) floating around on the Chinese internet right now, and if experience serves me correctly, there will be few Chinese people with a registered email address who don’t see this in their inbox by the end of the week:

Petition for Chinese people all over the world to protest the Western media distorted reports of the 3-14 Vandalism/Arson incidents in Lhasa.

In early March in Lhasa, Tibet, there were violent incidents of vandalism and arson which CNN, BBC and other news media in the west published a large number of false and distorted reports. If you strongly protested the Western media distorted and inaccurate reports of this event, please sign your name.

Make no mistake, this petition was not started by some individual blogger, or some group like anti-CNN. It’s on Sina.com, one of China’s major portal websites. Note: If it was not a message with government approval, it would be removed very quickly.

There is a graph on the left showing how many people have signed the petition. It would be futile for me to report the number, because by the time you read this, there will already have been thousands more. Lets just say, it’s an Olympic size number! But my point is, a huge number of people within China feel this way about how the Western media sees their country. And it’s not a big stretch to assume that if you were born here you may very well feel the same way.

So lets look at a Chinese perspective, Carl Pei gives some good insight (h/t to HHR) as to why many in China feel the way they do:

Western coverage (CNN, Fox, BBC, …) hasn’t merely been biased against China, but downright against China. . . For instance, the protests were labeled as “peaceful”, when many Tibetans, even monks, were caught on tape with weapons destroying property or beating Police.

When they found this wasn’t working well for them, they then spread the false news that the Chinese Army (PLA) had set the riots up, dressing as monks. A picture was even provided as evidence, but only hours after the report that picture was also found to be fake.
. . .
I find it funny that Western media outlets, that often speak poorly of China’s state controlled media are responsible for such a catastrophic level of journalism. Clearly, they are at least as bad as their Chinese “propaganda-spreading” counterparts.

On German TV, people saw videos of how Nepalese Police beat monks at the same time as reporting as reporting the Tibet unrest in China. If I was an average German citizen, I sure as hell would hate China after watching the news too. All the false, bad press about China has caused major demonstrations outside the Chinese embassies throughout the entire Western world.
. . .
China unites, and fights back. All over the internet, one could see Chinese citizens posting on English message boards in their best English trying to explain their truth. Not long after, students set up a website, Anti CNN, to show the various “lies” that the Western media used to turn the story against China. If you are interested in learning more about Tibet, or how Chinese people feel about the situation, I strongly urge you to check the website.

Also, it’s funny to note that the Chinese government has noticed that the internet can not only work against them, but in favor of them too. After years of inaccessibility from the Middle Kingdom, the BBC, which was responsible for many of the so called lies, was suddenly unblocked in the midst of chaos so that everyone in China could see how they reported. I was shocked at fist, but now believe it was a very smart move. [Bold is mine]

While I don’t agree with everything Carl says, I think he does raise a lot of points that many people have not yet considered. Both sides can learn something from each other here. It remains to be seen whether or not they will.

h/t to zjjtrans for the link

Further reading: Sina Video page on Lhasa incident