Chinese Reactions to Western Media on Tibet
Wherever your sympathies lie, it seems important to understand how Western media coverage of the violence in Tibet is being perceived from within China. There have been a number of blog posts about this, and Ethan Zuckerman has already done a great job of rounding them up. I especially liked Rebecca MacKinnon’s piece. She used to work for CNN, one of the main targets of these critiques.
P. Kerim Friedman is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, in Taiwan, where he teaches linguistic and visual anthropology. He is co-director of the film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!, winner of the 2011 Jean Rouch Award from the Society of Visual Anthropology. Follow Kerim on Twitter.
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It reminds me of American pollsters finding over 80% of Americans actually believe they are helping save the world in Iraq.
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Re: John Smith
Chinese citizens may be a bit too overconfident in the idea that the CCP has “liberated” the Tibetans, but the Tibetan GIE in Dharamsala is no stranger to overstretching the facts either. Grab any Free Tibet literature and invariably one of the 10 or so bullet points that are featured prominently will be “Tibet was an independent nation prior to Chinese takeover in 1951″. The exact truth of that statement is a very complicated web of politics that involves not only China and the former govt of Tibet, but also Britain, India, Russia, etc. In essence, the Chinese aren’t the only ones who know about propaganda.
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Thanks for posting these, Kerim.
Here’s one other link from China Digital Times, on “Chinese Bloggers on Tibet”
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/03/chinese-bloggers-on-tibet/
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Not strictly related to this post, but strongly related to China. Most of the bad things we hear about China are true, however we shouldn’t lose a proper global point of view and I try to show the other part:
http://www.noiblau.com
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