News – “Citizing Propaganda” in China
We’ve all heard about the pending trade war with China, and many have speculated that the Chinese government may put in place a crippling trade restriction in response to the United States passing a trade bill with President Obama. But, what if the news were actually news from China? That would be news, but it wouldn’t be the kind of news you’d hear in the United States. You see, news in China is different than news here in America. In fact, the two cultures couldn’t be more different. This article will explore some examples of Chinese news making headlines in the U.S.
The last two paragraphs sound a little bit like an American news story. An example of news from China that caught my ear was this: Last week, a Chinese court convicted 11 doctors who had been found guilty of negligence, including on death row. An article in the New York Times described the long time delay in reaching a verdict, which in turn led to the long time sentence. Another interesting example was this: Last month, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about Apple’s new iPad. The Wall Street Journal did a rather extensive write up of the event, discussing both the device and China as a whole.
A Chinese Internet censorship article posted online also mentions Apple’s iPad as an example of how the Chinese government is trying to prevent the spread of Western culture, or at least prevent people from accessing materials that are too foreign to them. This news story made me think of antedating. Antedating refers to past events, and is an event that happened far in the past. So, if this antedating event took place a long time ago, does that mean we can’t use technology to accomplish the same things today? Well, if you look at the Chinese censorship, they do restrict access to materials that might be considered an antedating of events in the past.
However, this kind of news story idea isn’t likely to make much sense to most people. Why would China ban the very thing that made it all possible? Well, consider if you will President Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around.” The term “Western civilization” was used repeatedly throughout the speech, yet the U.S. was sitting on top of the proverbial Chinese tiger, at that point in history.
Would China ban that tiger because it was a danger to the Chinese people? No, they’d instead like to use the symbol to promote their own interests, as it is currently doing. What does this mean for the United States? It means that we need to make sure that our own ideas are not banned by the Chinese communist party, and that includes ideas of freedom and capitalism, which the Chinese communist party does not want to see brought to China. Therefore, I suspect that the “news” meant to promote this event, rather than the topic itself, was actually a complete farce, designed to rouse Americans against the United States, and provoke a response from the Chinese government. I wonder if President Obama was aware that he was being manipulated?
What can we learn from this long time lesson? That, ultimately, is the question that every American must ask themselves every day: is all of this news worthy to be placed into print? Especially when it appears that the whole point of this event was to create a stir in the American populace, using the symbol of liberty and capitalism to do so? If our nation had once again demonstrated its strength during the Cold War, and if we had once again demonstrated that we are indeed one world leader, then why would this particular move by the Chinese government be welcomed with open arms? Please consider all this.