China Bashing : The Exaggerations of American News Outlets

On any given day, open your newspaper, visit your city’s newspaper website, or simply listen to the morning news and you will always hear a story on a “China Freedom Crackdown”. Other standard phrases include “Extensive Censorship”, “Internet blocking”, and “Internet restrictions”.

I get it. America loves an enemy and any country that can be considered “not democratic” is automatically put into the “enemy” category. Our news outlets live and breath on pumping stories into our homes about our enemies, how bad they are, and how good we have it. Just today, the story of the Jasmine protests planned in China has created a media storm on how bad China is to their people and how they restrict free flow of information.

Today was another chorus of fear mongering articles including:

The World

Bloomberg News
Financial Times
Reuters
Business Week
and
The Los Angeles Times

All hoping to sell some papers and some ad space by finding something bad to say about China. Over the years it has added up to some incredibly silly generalizations about the country.

“Didn’t you know that people can’t surf the Internet in China?”
“Didn’t you know that people can’t write blogs in China?”
“Didn’t you know that all Chinese people are slaves to the government?”

Just to show this is all complete nonsense, you should know that I am writing this blog from China. I am surfing the Internet, pulling up all the “anti-China” articles and writing freely about them in this blog. Do you understand? No blocking the Internet. No blocking of my ability to post blogs internationally. No restrictions on my freedoms whatsoever.

Does China monitor the Internet and stop people who openly plot against its government from moving forward with their plans? Yes. Every government does this. Recently in the United States the fact that an Iranian book was found in the Arizona desert made national news on outlets like Fox News. (Terrorist book) Every government protects itself against people who openly say they want to bring down the government. The difference is that America is so starved for a “worthy enemy” that we are doing everything we can to provoke China in our news.

Very few Americans know anything about China. Very few American reporters who are reporting on China know anything about China. All the articles start by citing a blog entry by an Anti-China blogger. No one mentions the fact that China has a healthy economy and is racing forward in prosperity and growth, leaving America in the dust. No one talks about the fact that China’s public transportation infrastructure is the envy of every American city. No one mentions that the China food supply is steadily improving while American food supplies are growing more and more dangerous. No one talks about the VERY IMPORTANT fact that China paid for the last US bailout by increasing its treasury holdings to 900 billion. (Bloomberg report)

The bottom line is that China is an amazing country with a recent history of fantastic decisions as a government. Many of these decisions were not politically correct, but they have succeeded in managing a population of 1.3 billion people in a way that every other country should envy. Imagine if America had 1.3 billion people instead of just over 300 million. It would be disastrous. America is being crushed by the illegal immigration of a few million people. If the population in America was 1.3 Billion it would be anarchy and a human disaster. Its time to stop bashing China and to start looking at the pragmatic way that they are coping with all the challenges of managing such a huge population. It is time to learn why China is becoming the dominant model for the world and how America is falling to the wayside as a failed model.

I am an American and I wish the best for my country. I just hate having to live through the time where American has to rebuild everything again from the bad management of our government and the irresponsible reporting that has created a nation of paranoids and a government of carpetbaggers.

Itia (Abroad)