Guest Post by a Loathsome Coward

(A guest post by a prominent White American China-blogger who will remain anonymous):

When I moved to China around two years ago and began to work for China’s Propaganda Department, my eyes were opened.   I began to understand that the Chinese Communist Party is not so bad.   My blog began to reflect my new understanding, my newly corrected thoughts.

After I was sacked from my job working for China’s Propaganda Department a few weeks ago, I flew back to America, and as soon as I arrived back in America my eyes were opened.   I began to remember that the Chinese Communist Party really is bad after all.   My blog began to reflect my new understanding, my newly corrected thoughts.

It’s all about perspective, you see.   Journalism is all about perspective.

PS, please meet me in the men’s lavatory in five minutes.   I’ll be in the second stall from the left.    If you stuff a red envelope between my toes, I’ll know you’re the one I’ve been waiting for.

Ivan has gone back to America

A while ago we lost touch with our American friend and co-blogger, Ivan.    And for some years we have known him to be secretive about his work.

Over the past two years or so, he told us he had moved back to America.    But now he has told us the whole truth, that for the past several years he has been working as a journalist for North Korea’s internet journal,  “Happy News For Foreigner Who Love Dear Leader”.

We take our friend Ivan at his word, at face value, when he tells us that for the past several years he has occasionally visited America for conjugal visits with his fiancee the exotic dancer Hypatia De La Pink – who, Ivan tells us, was released from prison in 2007 and is now on probation  – and we take him at his word, at face value, when he now tells us that the reason why he has finally left North Korea and his extraordinary position as a Western journalist in North Korea, striving to “reform North Korean journalism from within”, is because of his love for his fiancee, Hypatia De La Pink (exotic dancer at the Kit Kat Klub somewhere in Idaho, USA,  in booth number 10).

And Ivan assures us that he remains on good terms with his former employers, the Propaganda Department of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (aka North Korea), and Ivan remains proud that he did his bit to help North Korean journalism to become more open and more progressive.

Therefore, in closing, Ivan dedicates this song to all of his friends in North Korea’s Department of Propaganda, and he promises that he will continue to write about North Korea even after he moves back to America, in ways of which his North Korean friends will approve, because now his credibility as a journalist or PR man depends, and will always depend – in all countries – on his keeping good relations with his most recent employer of the past several years, North Korea’s Department of Propaganda:

(Disclaimer:   This is satire; Ivan is a fictional character.    But this satire is based loosely on some real-life events.)

Russia’s “Tank Men”, 1991

This is a response to comment number 2 made by “Matthew Tan” in our recent post about China’s “Tank Man”.

In his comment, Matthew Tan posted a link to a PRC propaganda video, a pastiche of several clips of video footage of the events in Beijing on June 4 1989.    We do not challenge the validity of the video footage, and we see nothing really “new” in the video of “Tank Man”.

But what we do challenge is the Chinese narration which argues that the Chinese Army (PLA) exercised “restraint” on that day.

Yes indeed, the Chinese who drove the tank in front of which “Tank Man” risked his life, exercised restraint.    He did not kill “Tank Man”, and so he deserves to be honoured for his basic human decency.

But is it such a surprise that one Chinese soldier exercised restraint and acted with basic human decency?    Only the most vicious racist would say otherwise.   Of course there are many morally decent men in the PLA!

But the existence of one act, or several acts, of charity and decency among the PLA on that day, can not logically be extrapolated as evidence that the PLA as a whole acted with restraint.    It is a logical fallacy to argue so.

The existence of some PLA acts of decency and charity on that day does not change the fact that on the whole, the PLA did not act with restraint.    And the simple evidence of this is the fact that at least hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of Chinese citizens were massacred by the PLA on that day.

To put this in proper perspective, let’s take a look at a photo of several of Russia’s “Tank Men”, Russians who risked their lives to stop the Soviet Army tanks that the Communist Party sent into Moscow on 19 August, 1991:

Notice the Russian soldier still sitting in his tank turret, overwhelmed with grief and repentance for how he almost turned his guns upon his own people.

You see, when the Soviet Communist Party sent tanks into Moscow in 1991 to silence and to murder their fellow citizens,  there was not just one “Tank Man” in Moscow, but thousands.    Many of them were old women who reproached the Russian soldiers and remonstrated with them to refrain from using violence, and the Russian soldiers listened to their old Grandmothers, and their guns remained silent, and then the soldiers repented.    Consequently, only around three Russians were killed on that day, all of them through accidents like slipping and falling.

So don’t tell me that the PLA acted with “restraint”.   If the PLA as a whole had acted with restraint, then there would have been not just one, but thousands of “Tank Men” in Beijing on June 4 1989, and not thousands of dead but just two or three.

毋忘六四

No, there is nothing wrong with your monitor.  I have switched the background colour scheme of this blog from light blue to black as a sign of respect for those who died during the Massacre on 4 June 1989.  Lest we forget.

China: What IS China? Here’s a new theory.

China.   You’ve heard of it.   And it is indisputable that “China is shaking the world”.

But what IS China?   What is really going on in China?   There is no simple answer.    All that any Western journalist or PR agent can say without reservation, is that China is China, and China is shaking the world.

Is this good?   Is it bad?   Those are questions that only ignorant people ask.   As Nietzsche said, all real Supermen – meaning all Western journalists who are recruited by the PRC propaganda organs to be whores for the PRC’s propaganda machine – are “Beyond Good And Evil”.

To paraphrase Saint Paul – an assimilationist “splittist” Jew who knew nothing about national consciousness nor about the PRC’s  eternal claims to Tibet and Taiwan – “When I was a child, I spoke as a child and reasoned as a child, but after I got a phone call from the PRC’s Global Times to recruit me to be a propaganda whore for the Chinese Communist Party’s Department of Propaganda, then I put away childish things and convinced myself that I had ‘matured’”.

So now, in all subtlety and maturity, let us ask ourselves again, what IS China?

Only “mature” American PR agents/journalists have ever seriously considered that question!

Is China totally good, or totally bad?

(Gasp!) Wait!  Wait!   Now that I have begun to read  China’s Global Times which now has an American editor, yes now, now I have begun to UNDERSTAND CHINA!

Silly me, until I began to read China’s Global Times, I ignorantly assumed that China was totally bad! But now my eyes have been opened!  Thank you, thank you, Global Times, for teaching me, an ingoramus, that China is NOT totally bad!

I, and around one billion English-speaking Westerners, simply would have been lost and remained ignorant about China, if it were not for China’s Global Times!

The new revelations China’s Global Times has taught me about China being not totally bad, reminds me of the revelations made by Monty Python’s resident intellectual, Ann Elk:

Global Times: The Implication of its “Split Personality”

Simon Elegant at Time Magazine’s The China Blog made some interesting observations about the new English edition of the Global Times.   His concerns are shared to some extent by my co-blogger Ned Kelly, even though Ned is writing exclusively about possible dilemmas facing American journalists who choose to work for the CCP propaganda machine.

There is nothing wrong with a multi-lingual newspaper (or broadcasting service) wanting to adopt a slightly different editorial focus for each of its different language editions.  Major European national broadcasters such as the BBC (as a commenter “bylooker” has correctly pointed out) have similar arrangements for their Chinese language services.  After all, different language editions appeal to different audience groups.  However, what would happen if different editorial policies result in major ideological conflicts?  Or if there is a complaint from a bilingual Chinese patriot who is adamant that certain topics should remain taboo for national interest?  How are these differences going to be reconciled? 

Before anyone accuses me of fear mongering, I want you to have a closer look at the Zhang Danhong incident.  Zhang Danhong’s experience at Deutsche Welle serves as solemn reminder that disputes resulting from two language editions of a single publication adopting different editorial policies can have devastating effects for the parties involved, particularly those in the firing line.

JR from JustRecently’s Beautiful Blog has covered the Zhang Danhong incident in great details.  I don’t intend to reinvent the wheel.  So I am referring you to JR’s Blog for a detailed coverage.  Below, I’ll just give a quick summary.

Like the BBC, Deutsche Welle’s Chinese Service operates under the principle of editorial independence.  A while ago, Zhang Danhong, the deputy manager for its Chinese Department, was suspended.  The entire Chinese Department was subsequently under review for allegedly violating the national broadcaster’s policy of promoting democracy and human rights.  The case had been referred to a parliamentary commission for hearing.  There were allegations made against Ms Zhang for saying that China had succeeded in lifting 400 million people out of poverty during the past thirty years, thus contributing more than other nations to Article Three of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  She was also accused of sugar-coating original German reports in Beijing’s favour when she translated these reports into Chinese.  She had allegedly translated “Tibetan protests” into “violent riots”, and “protesters” into “separatists”.  Thanks to the German legal system’s respect for freedom of speech, Ms Zhang was finally acquitted of misconduct.  Her professionalism, however, was under strict scrutiny and she was subsequently suspended from working in front of the microphone.  The Head of Department Matthias von Hein was also removed from his position and transferred elsewhere.

Should a similar dispute break out at the Global Times, I doubt very much parties in the firing line would be treated with such leniency and fairness.  After all, any scandal of such magnitude will constitute a loss of face for the newspaper’s management board.  We all know how well Chinese leaders respond to complaints and criticisms.  Last but not least, will there be circumstances in which reporting “stories on topics that are taboo in the Chinese media” can be construed as “leaking state secret” or as “foreign agents conducting espionage activities in China”?  Yes, Simon, it’s a good suggestion.  I’ll keep a keen eye on further development.

 

China’s “Global Times” and treason

Catherine and I have noticed that recently, one of the American leaders of the English-language China-blogosphere has begun to work directly for the PRC’s propaganda organs.

We do not posit a direct equivalence between that American man’s life and the life of the American traitor Joe Dresnok, but we do see considerable similarities.

PR viagra cannot revive the limp Olympic Torch

Some of our readers might remember how, around this time a year ago, Catherine and I blogged voluminously about the bloody stupidity of China’s Olympic Torch relay.

Now here comes news that the IOC has decided, belatedly, to jettison the international Olympic Torch relay,  because the Torch relay of the 2008 Olympics turned out to be a Titanic f— up of “public relations”.

We are pleased to hear this news of how the IOC has belatedly come to its senses about the Torch.     We only regret that so many innocent people were wounded, tortured and murdered as a direct consequence of Lenovo’s Olympic Torch path through emotionally nuclear places such as Tibet, in 2008.

We can reasonably assume that the Chinese and Western organisers and “public relations” consultants who are responsible for the murderous debacle of the 2008 Olympic Torch relay, are now still sitting pretty, still earning good money and retiring to their own safe, warm beds every night, willfully oblivious to the roles they have personally played in the torture and deaths of innocents.

I can easily imagine that some of them, or at least the Westerners among them, are now fierce critics of the likes of AIG and other corporate criminals who have destroyed America’s economy and dragged the rest of the world down with them.

But either God, or the gods, or the natural law of the survival of Truth, will ultimately make them pay for the sufferings that their willful stupidities have inflicted upon others.    And their first installments of payback will be their loss of sleep, for the rest of their lives.    Because I believe that you can run, but you can’t hide, from God-given conscience.

Meanwhile, I dedicate the following video clip to China’s 2008 Olympic Torch relay, and especially to Lenovo’s American “public relations” consultants who made that torch relay what it was:

Chinese netizens are more interested in Zhang ZiYi than in Hillary Clinton

Our recent traffic on this post about Zhang ZiYi’s ass, has been a lot more than our post about Hillary Clinton offending China.

So there ya go.  Chinese netizens are more interested in Zhang ZiYi’s ass than they are in how the American Secretary of State has insulted China.

Therefore, it seems to me and Catherine, that  China will become as stupid as America, very soon.

Hillary Clinton insults China; Californian tofu-liberals agree with her

The Los Angeles Times – whom our friend Ivan expects to become a Spanish-language newspaper very soon- has said about Hillary Clinton’s recent bloody disastrous, preternaturally ignorant words to her Chinese hosts:

She went too far in saying that human rights “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.” There is real cause for concern about China’s human rights record, and who will press the Asian giant if not the United States? Unfortunately, the decision reflects political and economic realities of the moment.

Um, no it doesn’t.    Hillary Clinton’s words to China do not reflect the realities of China at all.