By all means, I feel grateful to the western media for their distorted coverage of the recent riots in Lhasa and a few other places. Thanks to their distortion, a new force has risen in the international communication for China, which are the ordinary Chinese people around the globe who have uttered their voices.
They are telling the world by commentaries and self-made videotapes on the web, by letters to politicians and media, and by peaceful rallies and demonstrations that Tibet is, was and will always be part of China.
They are telling the world that the Chinese nation is composed of 56 ethnic groups and the 56 ethnic groups belong to the one family. They want integration of their home. And they would say No to any attempt to part Tibet from China.
Never before have the ordinary Chinese people uttered their voices so openly, clearly and resolutely to the world on issues related to China’s Tibet. As a journalist who has worked for nearly three decades in China’s international communication, I feel an unprecedented reinforcement in these expressions.
This is the real people power, not orchestrated by the Chinese government, but incurred by the western media.
In fact, many of the critics of western media’s distorted reports are also critical of the Chinese government and official media. However, they share a same bottom line, which is articulated by an unknown netizen at BBS of tianya.cn, a popular Chinese portal:
“However dissatisfied I am with my salary, I won’t support the Taiwan secessionists;
“However disillusioned I am at the government, I won’t go for the Dalai Lama; and
“However disappointed I am in my life, I won’t do anything to dissociate my nation.”
Actually, this is a political position of the grassroots Chinese spanning different age groups in different countries. As elaborated by a netizen identified as “akaaaa” and a law major, “We Chinese no longer harbor a blind faith in western media’s reports and we have learned to make our own analysis.”
My friend Zhou Jun, an engineer with a local TV station in Sichuan, is a good example. He just suffered a cut in his salary in the wake of an internal restructuring when the riots in Lhasa burst out. The incident could have nothing to do with his personal life and gains.
Yet he was so indignant at the nature of the riots and western media’s crooked coverage that he cast away his personal troubles and was occupied with gathering commentaries and fact pieces showing truth of the issue and publishing them in his blog at bolianshe.com.
Through Zhou Jun and his blog, I came to know a bunch of overseas Chinese, who also went beyond themselves to condemn western media and the Dalai clique with reason and facts.
Out of his conscience for justice, a netizen named “houjibofa” – “deep accumulation but rarely fire” – took the pains to translate some English media’s reports into Chinese and refuted them paragraph by paragraph on an overseas Chinese website called talkcc.net.
Another overseas netizen identified as “laone” – “this old monk” – had quit writing online for several years. But the recent event drove the linguistic professor to write several letters to a local newspaper protesting its biased reports on Tibet. Ignored, he returned to the website to share his experience and feelings with more people.
All this indignation and passion have been ignited by the western media. Perhaps the official Chinese media are clumsy, but at least they are not as hypocritical as the western media which always wave the flag of impartiality yet are actually biased on many issues related to China.
If people are entitled to have their voices heard, it should not be only those from the Dalai Lama and Tibetans in exile. But voices other than theirs are often missing in western media. Tibetans who are peacefully living and working in China never get the limelight given to those secessionists, let alone Han people and other ethnic groups.
Even the rallies expressing the Chinese people’s position for their country’s integrity and sovereignty, taking place in the home of those western media, are not fairly covered. The Toronto rally last Saturday (March 29), for instance, drew little attention from the major western media. The few who did covered the event focused on one or two Tibetans in exile but rather ignored the hundreds of participants claiming Tibet is part of China.
Such performance on the part of western media tells lie of their “impartiality” and makes the “freedom of the press” pales.
As “laone” noted, “I used to belong to the rightist wing, but all of a sudden I found myself a liberal leftist.” And he attributed the change to the western media.
Western media indeed serve as a negative teacher for the Chinese public, and their education is much more effective than our government and official media that pure freedom of the press is impossible.
That’s why I wish to thank these good teachers sincerely. (End)
This article write by 熊蕾, her blog : http://xionglei.blshe.com/
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