http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/423120
headline:
Behind welcoming smiles anger is mounting in China
A few key countries and Western media bear brunt of criticism over
`biased' coverage
May 09, 2008 04:30 AM
PIERRE MARTIN
I've been in Beijing for a month to lecture at a local university, and
everywhere I go I see smiling faces and people extending friendly
hands.
Of course, it helps that I'm getting around with my two young sons,
but I cannot help but notice how eager local residents are to welcome
the world, in the spirit of the upcoming Olympics. Not once have we
encountered any sign of hostility.
Beneath the smiles, however, the Chinese are annoyed at Westerners who
want to spoil their party in the name of support for Tibet.
Every day the local media report on this issue. Mostly, they show
images of Chinese expatriates clamouring their support for a united
China and for the Olympics, and they pound on the "biased" Western
media who refuse to take a balanced view of the Tibet issue.
In the last month, Chinese opinion has turned increasingly critical of
Western countries.
France is a prominent target of protests, including a widely
publicized =96 if not much followed =96 call to boycott the French
discount chain Carrefour, China's largest foreign-owned retailer.
In a recent front-page headline, China Daily cited a poll observing
that Chinese opinion about the French has soured sharply since
protests marred the Olympic torch relay in Paris. As many as 60 per
cent of those polled said their opinion of France had deteriorated,
while about 50 per cent noted a growing dislike of Britain and
Germany.
The paper said nothing, however, about the country that registered the
worst drop in public appreciation (65 per cent) even if the flame
didn't stop there: Canada!
More than individual countries, it is the Western media that take the
lion's share of criticism.
This point was made most forcefully to me when, as I came out of the
Beijing Zoo with my sons, we met demonstrators denouncing "human
rights abuse in France" and anti-China media bias after the Olympic
flame's turbulent passage in Paris =96 all this under the approving eyes
of police officers, steps away from a Carrefour store. Whoever said
the Chinese government doesn't allow demonstrations?
The Western media, as one young protester told me, are biased in
favour of advocates of the Tibet cause and fail to report the Chinese
position.
I got essentially the same message from students when I asked them how
they felt about disruptions in the Olympic torch relay, and prospects
of impending disruptions during the Games: It's all the media's fault.
I tried my best to explain to them that, with a few well-known
exceptions, most Western media tend to be fairly balanced in their
reporting on China. Westerners, I argued, can hear the official
Chinese position on Tibet. They just don't believe it.
The problem is not that the Chinese don't have a case. Indeed, the
Dalai Lama is a charming man but his past is shady, as are some of the
characters around him, for whom an independent Tibet might look like a
chance to restore some sort of theocratic feudalism.
The problem, as I told my students, is that when faced with a choice
between the position of a powerful one-party state with a questionable
human rights record and a habit of censoring the press, on one side,
and a poor, powerless nation headed by a smooth-talking Nobel
laureate, on the other side, people tend to side with the latter. ...
(cont)
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