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I am a Chinese living in Europe. Almost all the articles in media I read in Western media on China are negative. They only talk about HK, Uyghurs. But China has

I am a Chinese living in Europe. Almost all the articles in media I read in Western media on China are negative. They only talk about HK, Uyghurs. But China has many exciting things happening and very dynamic. But in another hand, I saw the western media just criticize everything, it's like the whole world only has negative things happening. I personally don't hate the Chinese government. The people's living standard is hugely improved these two decades, and my friends in China are mostly happy about their life.

cromwellian 6y ago
The press isn’t just supposed to report government propaganda of how everything is going great because invariable while some people are benefitting, others are suffering. Be it the civilians in Yemen being starved by a Saudi-led American backed proxy war, or the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Yes, China has raised a huge number of people out of poverty, mostly thanks to Deng inviting in foreign investment, but Xi is turning China into a surveillance state, using a few terrorist events to justify large scale oppression in Xinjiang, and the CCP is on balance, a corrupt inner circle of grifters getting rich off the economic rise. How does China’s parliament delegates have 100 billionaires in it? Xi’s family net worth has widely been reported to be hundreds of millions. How did they earn it? I’m not willing to give my own government a pass for the good things they’ve done (eg Obama on healthcare) and excuse the bad things they’ve done (extrajudicial drone killings) And I don’t think giving a free pass on massive Corruption, an oppressive police state in Xinjiang, etc is justified because the economy is good. So invariably someone’s going to claim I’m just getting my info from bias western media, but I’ll just tell you I have traveled all over Xinjiang and speak passable Mandarin, in addition to having lived in China for a while. You can quite clearly see the overwhelming security apparatus in Xinjiang on every street corner and road, and I don’t need CNN to tell what my eyes see. Like White people dismissing the conditions of Black people in the US, it’s really easy for Han Chinese to think the Uyghur minority concerns are blown out of proportion. I had many Han friends tell me not to go to Xinjiang, that it was far too dangerous. The reality is, I never once felt threatened by Uyghurs, they were incredibly friendly and hospitable. I was more nervous from soldiers with rifles everywhere, and constant road checkpoints demanding my photo and passport every few kilometers. If you live in a Tier-1/Tier-2/Tier-3 city, it's really easy to dismiss the complaints of minority provinces or rural poor, especially when the one view of what's happening you get comes from state media. I love China, am hopeful by its steady rise, and the world will be a better place with another advanced wealthy civilization of a billion people, and hopefully the whole 7 billion people on the planet can be uplifted. But it is not going to be served by a corrupt authoritarian government of grifters getting more and more control and power over of a large fraction of the world's economy and people. Are the foreign press wrong to worry about China building massive dams and threatening India's water supply for example? Pakistan, China, and India are involved in a 3 way war over fresh water that affects 2+ billion people, and all of them have nuclear weapons. The press should be looking at things that are harmful, not just saying "Good job government". FDR did a lot of good things for the US, but he also locked up 100,000+ Japanese in camps. The founding fathers did a lot of good in writing the US Constitution, but they also owned slaves. Criticism of government is a good thing.
- fspeech 6y ago
  Focusing on the negatives of your own country is fine because the readers have the ability to judge for themselves. Focusing only on the negatives of a foreign country is not unless the goal is to agitate the populace for conflict and war. Take your imagined trilateral water war as an example, have you looked into how minor the supply is to India? Have you considered the fact that damming for electricity has little effect on total volume of flow? Otoh, when US dammed the Colorado the water was diverted for agriculture and urban consumption. The river basically dried up before reaching Mexico.
  - cromwellian 6y ago
    >"Focusing only on the negatives of a foreign country is not unless the goal is to agitate the populace for conflict and war." Western news media news is designed for western audience consumption. Pointing out the suffering of people in other countries is something that people with empathy want to know about. For example, when Western media points out the suffering of Palestinians, we hear that this is because of anti-Israel bias. The reality is, most people aren't opposed to Israel, they're concerned with the suffering imposed by the occupation, and the ancillary effects on their own national interest due to regional instability. The goal of the media isn't conflict and war, it's awareness and political change. If there's a genocide happening, I want to know about it. If the US backed Saudi proxy war in Yemen is destroying huge number of lives because of American made weapons or policy, I want to know about it, and if a large US trading partner is locking people in Xinjiang and even manufacturing with slave labor, I'd rather buy my products somewhere else. >"Take your imagined trilateral water war as an example, have you looked into how minor the supply is to India?". Of course, have you? There are 130 million people who live in the Brahmaputra basin. And 1 billion downstream of the Hindu Kush. You don't think India is concerned about the dams going up in Kashmir and the Tibetan Plateau? "damming for electricity has little effect on total volume of flow" you're talking past damns, the concern is over future mega dams. >"Otoh, when US dammed the Colorado the water was diverted for agriculture and urban consumption. The river basically dried up before reaching Mexico." Yeah, and that was bad for both the environment, and for Mexico, which is exactly why people are concerned about China's activity, not just for geo-political reasons and the 1+ billion people dependent on the Tibetan plateau water supply, but the environmental damage that could result as well. Your own example shows exactly why those dependent on Tibetan and Hindu Kush supplies should be concerned about dam building, in which they have little say over. By all means, use past US transgressions as a road map for why we should be concerned. Take Belt and Road Initiative. Sucker someone into taking a large loan, make them use the loaned money to buy from your own country's companies, and then when the debtor can't pay, seize concessions. The US played this out extremely well all over the world (see _Confessions of an Economic Hitman_ https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081 https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins...), and it's being repeated: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank... It's because of how awful the US's policy was in doing the same thing in South America and Africa that I'm concerned now about what I see happening now, essentially neo-colonialism. However, the real issue I sense, is that a lot of 五毛 and 玻璃心 don't want to hear any criticism, even if it's legitimate, because of elevated nationalism dialed up by Xi over the years. And it is this rising nationalism, in the US with Trump, in Europe (e.g. in Hungary), and in China that we should be worried about. We've managed to temporarily put down Trumpism here, but Xi made himself President for life, and authoritarianism combined with rising nationalism and economic power is not a good recipe, if the 20th century taught us anything.
cambalache 6y ago
You are correct but you are missing the key ingredient. Western media criticizes western and non-western governments all the same (to different degrees of course).But in other realms (things like cinema, sports, music,literature, videogames) the western people, their way of life, their worldview, and their history are lionized and romanticized while the non-western side of history is still presented as barbaric, brutish and retrograde. So not only Putin,Xi,Bolsonaro or Modi suck but the people "over there" are gangsters, killers, terrorists and the enemies to conquer and defeat. You need to be moved into tears by the story of a little kid from Kansas who went to Vietnam or Iraq though.

cromwellian 6y ago

The press isn’t just supposed to report government propaganda of how everything is going great because invariable while some people are benefitting, others are suffering. Be it the civilians in Yemen being starved by a Saudi-led American backed proxy war, or the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Yes, China has raised a huge number of people out of poverty, mostly thanks to Deng inviting in foreign investment, but Xi is turning China into a surveillance state, using a few terrorist events to justify large scale oppression in Xinjiang, and the CCP is on balance, a corrupt inner circle of grifters getting rich off the economic rise. How does China’s parliament delegates have 100 billionaires in it? Xi’s family net worth has widely been reported to be hundreds of millions. How did they earn it? I’m not willing to give my own government a pass for the good things they’ve done (eg Obama on healthcare) and excuse the bad things they’ve done (extrajudicial drone killings) And I don’t think giving a free pass on massive Corruption, an oppressive police state in Xinjiang, etc is justified because the economy is good. So invariably someone’s going to claim I’m just getting my info from bias western media, but I’ll just tell you I have traveled all over Xinjiang and speak passable Mandarin, in addition to having lived in China for a while. You can quite clearly see the overwhelming security apparatus in Xinjiang on every street corner and road, and I don’t need CNN to tell what my eyes see. Like White people dismissing the conditions of Black people in the US, it’s really easy for Han Chinese to think the Uyghur minority concerns are blown out of proportion. I had many Han friends tell me not to go to Xinjiang, that it was far too dangerous. The reality is, I never once felt threatened by Uyghurs, they were incredibly friendly and hospitable. I was more nervous from soldiers with rifles everywhere, and constant road checkpoints demanding my photo and passport every few kilometers. If you live in a Tier-1/Tier-2/Tier-3 city, it's really easy to dismiss the complaints of minority provinces or rural poor, especially when the one view of what's happening you get comes from state media. I love China, am hopeful by its steady rise, and the world will be a better place with another advanced wealthy civilization of a billion people, and hopefully the whole 7 billion people on the planet can be uplifted. But it is not going to be served by a corrupt authoritarian government of grifters getting more and more control and power over of a large fraction of the world's economy and people. Are the foreign press wrong to worry about China building massive dams and threatening India's water supply for example? Pakistan, China, and India are involved in a 3 way war over fresh water that affects 2+ billion people, and all of them have nuclear weapons. The press should be looking at things that are harmful, not just saying "Good job government". FDR did a lot of good things for the US, but he also locked up 100,000+ Japanese in camps. The founding fathers did a lot of good in writing the US Constitution, but they also owned slaves. Criticism of government is a good thing.

fspeech 6y ago
Focusing on the negatives of your own country is fine because the readers have the ability to judge for themselves. Focusing only on the negatives of a foreign country is not unless the goal is to agitate the populace for conflict and war. Take your imagined trilateral water war as an example, have you looked into how minor the supply is to India? Have you considered the fact that damming for electricity has little effect on total volume of flow? Otoh, when US dammed the Colorado the water was diverted for agriculture and urban consumption. The river basically dried up before reaching Mexico.
- cromwellian 6y ago
  >"Focusing only on the negatives of a foreign country is not unless the goal is to agitate the populace for conflict and war." Western news media news is designed for western audience consumption. Pointing out the suffering of people in other countries is something that people with empathy want to know about. For example, when Western media points out the suffering of Palestinians, we hear that this is because of anti-Israel bias. The reality is, most people aren't opposed to Israel, they're concerned with the suffering imposed by the occupation, and the ancillary effects on their own national interest due to regional instability. The goal of the media isn't conflict and war, it's awareness and political change. If there's a genocide happening, I want to know about it. If the US backed Saudi proxy war in Yemen is destroying huge number of lives because of American made weapons or policy, I want to know about it, and if a large US trading partner is locking people in Xinjiang and even manufacturing with slave labor, I'd rather buy my products somewhere else. >"Take your imagined trilateral water war as an example, have you looked into how minor the supply is to India?". Of course, have you? There are 130 million people who live in the Brahmaputra basin. And 1 billion downstream of the Hindu Kush. You don't think India is concerned about the dams going up in Kashmir and the Tibetan Plateau? "damming for electricity has little effect on total volume of flow" you're talking past damns, the concern is over future mega dams. >"Otoh, when US dammed the Colorado the water was diverted for agriculture and urban consumption. The river basically dried up before reaching Mexico." Yeah, and that was bad for both the environment, and for Mexico, which is exactly why people are concerned about China's activity, not just for geo-political reasons and the 1+ billion people dependent on the Tibetan plateau water supply, but the environmental damage that could result as well. Your own example shows exactly why those dependent on Tibetan and Hindu Kush supplies should be concerned about dam building, in which they have little say over. By all means, use past US transgressions as a road map for why we should be concerned. Take Belt and Road Initiative. Sucker someone into taking a large loan, make them use the loaned money to buy from your own country's companies, and then when the debtor can't pay, seize concessions. The US played this out extremely well all over the world (see _Confessions of an Economic Hitman_ https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081 https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins...), and it's being repeated: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank... It's because of how awful the US's policy was in doing the same thing in South America and Africa that I'm concerned now about what I see happening now, essentially neo-colonialism. However, the real issue I sense, is that a lot of 五毛 and 玻璃心 don't want to hear any criticism, even if it's legitimate, because of elevated nationalism dialed up by Xi over the years. And it is this rising nationalism, in the US with Trump, in Europe (e.g. in Hungary), and in China that we should be worried about. We've managed to temporarily put down Trumpism here, but Xi made himself President for life, and authoritarianism combined with rising nationalism and economic power is not a good recipe, if the 20th century taught us anything.

cambalache 6y ago

You are correct but you are missing the key ingredient. Western media criticizes western and non-western governments all the same (to different degrees of course).But in other realms (things like cinema, sports, music,literature, videogames) the western people, their way of life, their worldview, and their history are lionized and romanticized while the non-western side of history is still presented as barbaric, brutish and retrograde. So not only Putin,Xi,Bolsonaro or Modi suck but the people "over there" are gangsters, killers, terrorists and the enemies to conquer and defeat. You need to be moved into tears by the story of a little kid from Kansas who went to Vietnam or Iraq though.