dispence

This whole Chinese media thing is starting to get on my nerves. I knew this might happen. Being a journalist and all, I though it might be tough coming to a communist country. I’ve grown up with the first amendment shoved down my throat. Free press? There’s no such thing in China.

I have yet to see Chinese media report about any deaths on the other side of the riots in Tibet. They continue to report on how devastated Chinese people are, how much their lives have been disrupted and how glad they are to be back to normal. I have seen nothing about the Tibetan people. How do they feel? They’re Chinese, too.

Yesterday in Greece the Olympic flame was lit. Naturally, China is ecstatic. The lighting made the cover of the China Daily complete with phrases like “Flame to travel across the globe to spread happiness and peace.” And, “The flame will radiate light and happiness.” Wow, if a little flame can do that you’d think it would end all wars.

Little did I know before checking my news online, but the lighting ceremony wasn’t as peachy as the government here would like everyone to think.

But, seriously, China is screwing up here. Watch that report and you’ll hear how Chinese television cut away from the protester so viewers here wouldn’t see. And what will be people’s first thought when the torch relay nears their hometown. “Ah! Hurray China! They’ve got the Olympics!” or “What was that with China and riots and Tibet?” Not too “happiness and peace” to me.

On the riots note, there is absolutely no foreign media being allowed into Tibet or the other Chinese provinces that have seen violence. Now, why would China do that? Is there something they’re trying to hide? Even if they’re not hiding anything, it would look a lot better to the world community if China just grew up and let journalists in. Transparency here would be a good thing, and supposedly China promised to give journalists more freedom because of the Olympics and all, but this is anything but.

For example, here’s a story from a guest speaker from our traveling seminar. He’s a freelance writer out of Beijing. I’ll summarize it to the best of my memory: He heard something about new fishing rules for fishermen off the coast of China. Something about a shortage or limits… along those lines I think. Anyways, he contacted the government to try and get some information but was turned away. He was able, though, to talk with someone off the record and found that the new rule was actually benefiting fisherman. To check that story, he set of to try and access some real fisherman on the coast but was turned down when trying to travel as a “journalist” to coastal provinces. So he went as a tourist instead. After talking with some fisherman it was confirmed that the new rules were, indeed, benefiting the fishing industry.

Now the point is that this writer was able to publish a story that said the new law was good for the fishing industry – good PR for the CPC if you ask me. Trouble is, if this writer didn’t circumvent the rules and talk to government officials off record and sneak across provincial boarders he wouldn’t have landed this good story. So if the government hadn’t been so cold to the idea of the story the truth would have come out earlier and better because it would be from the government itself.

Oh, well. This is China. I can’t complain, it’s just how they do things here.

As usual, I checked msnbc first thing this morning, and boy, was I surprised. The headline “Chinese troops head to Tibet.” Uh oh, I thought, what now? Was there something I missed in the last few days? Why would China be sending more troops to Tibet? But then I read the story (via AP).

The lead:

ZHONGDIAN, China – China sent additional troops into restive areas and made more arrests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in an effort to suppress anti-government protests even as the Dalai Lama offered face-to-face negotiations with Chinese leaders.

First question: When? Does this writer know his 5 W’s? Come on AP….

It was pretty obvious that China sure did send in more troops LAST WEEK!!! Why would MSNBC, almost a full week after the riots, come out with a headline like this? Hmm…

The story goes on:

Hundreds of paramilitary police aboard at least 80 trucks traveled along the main road winding through the mountains into southeastern Tibet. Others set up camp and patrolled in riot gear, helmets and, for a few, rifles in the area above Tiger Leaping Gorge, a tourist attraction that usually sees little unrest.

Whoa! A whole 80 trucks? By a nice touristy spot?!?!? This must be serious. But! This all happed a few days ago. Again, why all the hoopla now? I don’t have an answer to that. Maybe it’s to scare everyone in America. Hey America! Look what China is doing!

This is the “China Threat” tactic the west would like everyone to believe. There is simply no excuse for creating a headline like this that implies recent developments, as if China has just now sent a bunch of troops to Tibet. Most people won’t read the story, only scan the headline. But even if the story is read, readers will probably not understand when this happened. That’s because the story leaves that important point out. Very bad reporting if you ask me. Even worse of msnbc to make it a big headline.

Who knows? Especially if you’re like me and living in China with limited access to western news sources. The China Mainland English newspaper, the China Daily, reports that Chinese police used “no lethal force in dealing with the riots in Lhasa last Friday (Mar. 14).” But an International Herald Tribune story offers a different perspective: “many witnesses report[ed] gunshots.”

This much I feel confident is true:

• “The protests began peacefully on March 10, the anniversary of a failed uprising in 1959 against Chinese rule” (msnbc).
• Local Tibetans, fed up with years of rule by China, rioted violently. In one report, setting a police station on fire.
• The protesters are probably not supported by the Dalai Lama, evident by their apparent violent ways.
• Whatever happened probably started as demonstrations that turned violent. Who started what, when will probably never be known for sure.
• The riot(ors) are probably to blame for some Chinese deaths, so claims Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
• Around 1,000 Tibetans are under arrest. China won’t confirm that.
• “There are unconfirmed accounts of security forces using tear gas, cattle prods, live bullets and brute force to quell the demonstrations.”

China’s official story is that 13 “innocent civilians” died and 61 armed police were injured. There is absolutely no mention of the 80-some dead Tibetans – something international media reports.

Now there’s talk among EU members of a possible Olympic Ceremony boycott. A boycott would be a slap in China’s face. But I can see some benefit. A boycott would be the rest of the world saying to China, “If you want to play with the rest of us you better get your act together and act like a developed country.” I don’t think anyone really knows what the Chinese police are up to in Tibet, and the shadiness just creates more questions.

The government is not letting any foreign media into Tibet (although there are suggestions of a Gov. supported “tour”). Travel permits are no longer being issued to tourists. Permits are needed to enter Tibet and there is no word on when issuing will begin again.

This all comes just after a call by China’s Supreme People’s Court that the Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of speech to Chinese citizens. So are Tibetans Chinese citizens? Yup.

***I finally got my computer back up and running. Much more posts to come soon, including skiing in China.***

I wore a facemask for the first time today (Mar. 18, 2008). When I woke up this morning it was windy, dirty outside. It wasn’t the usual grey smog but a brown dust everywhere instead. It’s a dust storm, I realized. Usually I can see the other dorms across the basketball courts and soccer field from my building. Even on the smoggiest days it’s clear enough to see. Not today though. Only the faint ghost of a building made it through the cloud.

I headed outside for class and fought a sharp, cold wind on my bike. I biked as fast as I could while breathing little, as if I was constantly stuck behind a big truck on a dirt and gravel road. On the way back from class I had to breathe through my sleeve. I pulled my hand up a little and held the opening of the sleeve to my mouth and nose. It must have looked like I had a big, red trunk coming from my face. I rode home with one hand, the other protecting my respiratory system from the windy grime.

By midday the storm hadn’t subsided much. To be honest, it wasn’t that big of a storm. It was still pretty windy, though. I keep my cheese outside my window balanced on an inch and a half wide bar. It’s a good thing I tied a safety string to it or my cheese would have fallen five floors to the ground.

The facemask made a difference. I didn’t have to breathe the dust-filled air. The mask smelled like hospital, sterile but weird at the same time, as my classmate described it: “hospital baby powder.” I guess it’s better than the dust. Dirt in the air is worse than the pollution, I think. The smell of coal I can handle. Maybe coal’s particulates are smaller or something, but I don’t nearly have as tough time with the smog as I did with the dust. I could feel my throat fill up with slime after only a few minutes outside. I guess this will add to my “Beijing cough.” It won’t clear up until I leave this place.

Well, I don’t have worms but my computer did. It died over the weekend. Good thing I backed up my photos on my external hard drive. Phew!

Here’s what happened: I was trying to watch Lost. (ABC won’t let international IP’s view their episodes.) I went to download a player and when I opened the .exe my computer just shut down. Uh oh. Then it was acting all slow and there were a few processes running really hot, more then they shoud: lsass.exe and alg.exe. I ran a few programs to fix the problem but couldn’t find a solution. I was freaking out that my keyboard was being monitored (that’s what worms do). So every time I, say, log into Gmail the worm will notice I hit Tab then Enter and can figure out my username and password. Anyways, I decided to just start over and reinstalled Windows on my machine. Then it took me a few days to get all the right drivers so I can actually use it. Good thing my friend Rich Bowles was in town. He works for Intel and uses Lenovo laptops just like me! He as able to get me going on recovery. I now see light at the end of the tunnel. I still have some work to do, though, to get my system back to pre-worm form.

I think the worm came from some weird pop-ups all of us in Zijing Dorm No. 22 have experienced. While browsing, every once in a while little ads show up in the lower right side of the browser. They have little penguins that look like the mascots for QQ, a Chinese instant messaged service. I investigated this the first time they showed up. All I could get was some random url where the image was hosted. After I got my system running again, I was about to download Skype when a similar .exe showed up – similar to the one that killed my computer. I looked at it closely and noticed it was from the same (I think) url as the ad image. Aha! There’s some silly ad thing that gets through the Tsinghua network here and is infecting our computers! I clicked the Skype download button again and got the right .exe and installed that. Good thing I noticed or I would have had to start all over.

I went skiing over the weekend also. I’ll have photos and a good post on that as soon as I get photoshop and such back up and running. I’m heading to a ThinkPad support center soon to restore to factory settings.