"1. No foreign media are allowed to accompany the torch route in China, as only local Chinese press are allowed in the media vehicles that travel along the torch relay route."

This is great. That means any foreign press is free to make up any story, start any kind of rumour, with great excuse.

OK, lets wait for the Asian Sentinel video.

Who really cares about China's internal torch relay anyway.It's to promote their own "feel good factor",For all I care they can go around the country 500 hundred times if that helps to boost their seemingly deep-rooted"inferiority complex".
It's all pretty incestous anyway and very wasteful.

Excuse, in sense of reason or in sense of pretext? duh.

Recently, I have learned some interesting words and phrase, amongst them are

1. culturally genocide
2. inferiority complex

more is welcome

@Lark: Just read "The Ugly Chinaman" if you can get it. Lots of good things to learn if you can stomach the truth.

It is quite interesting to notice that the Olympic torch relay has become a very important topic of Western media. Before this time, I believe the news of torch relay has never become a so hot topic when other countries hosted Olympic Games. Why the people relate much political ideas to the peaceful sport event?

link

@hunxuer,

I first read "The ugly Chinaman" when I was 16 years old, or 17 years ago. And I reread it when I was 18, and several times later.

I has some feeling about "if you can get it", for example, "arrogance" and "ignorance".

The "incestuous" comment was kinda new. Thanks JBC. "Inferiority complex" is just as deplorable and pathetic as "racist superiority", but at least less deleterious and insulting.

@Hunxer

Bo Yang, the author of "The Ugly Chinamen," just past away recently. Yet I am sure he would not mind what I am going to say here.

His critique on the Chinese culture, unprecedentedly insightful and daring at it is, remains on the day-to-day living level(regarding personal hygienes etc.). He did criticized the Chinese character, like "in-group schism/fighting/suspicion/apathy towards cruelty etc." Though he claimed to be revealing the "cheapness in human (here specifically the Chinese) nature," I have to say these "uncivilized" and "pre-Enlightenment" behaviors are NOT unique to us Chinese. And cultural critique is absolutely necessary, as long as it does not blind us from thinking about the need for norms, institutions, and laws, in shaping human behavior.

I am glad to see Bo Yang's critique being employed by anyone to remind us Chinese on our flaws. I just think Lu Xun is a better source for the critique on the Chinese psyche. To add to our understanding on the current plight we Chinese are in, I recommend "The Trap of Modernization" 《现代化的陷阱》by He Qinglian.

And, maybe you should read another book, called "Chinamen" by Maxine Hong Kingston. Not ugly nor gorgeous, just unduly discriminated, yet dignified, compassionate, and enveloping all evils.

This is so boring...
Let's hope this torch gets to Beijing fast, so we can all get over this relay s***!
How about starting a post about inviting readers to bet on how many gold medals China will get this time around? Anybody interested in sports out there, for Christ's sake?

Sports? What's sports got to do with the Olympics?

@Hunxue'r - "The Ugly American" is also quite a good read, and equally as relevant today for the expat community as it was when it was written, as is Conrad's "Lord Jim".

@Lark in the Clouds - "Cultural Genocide" has to be one of the stupidest phrases around. Sure, it does actually refer to a real phenomenon (the distruction of a culture by outside influence) but using the term 'genocide' is some kind of attempt to compare this to the extermination of an entire race is simply ludicrous.

A Taiwanese friend of mine of the Pingpu (平铺) people uses this phrase to describe the treatment of his people by successive governments, but there are only about half-a-dozen people who speak his tribe's language anymore. When people willing decide not to learn a language (and nobody is stopping them from doing so) and give up their old way of life, I do not call that 'cultural genocide', I call that 'progress'!

Phrases you might want to learn instead include:

- "Astroturfing": the artificial creation of a grass-roots movement - see 'anti-CNN.com'

- "Blowback": see the world's reaction to recent Chinese protests for an example of a blowback causing blowback

- "Emperor's new clothes": See 'race relations within China and western reporting on the same'

- "Cognitive dissonance": See the Chinese people's discovery that the majority of people who know about Chinese rule in Tibet outside of China disaprove of it.

- "1984": Not the year, but the book, read the whole thing for what the majority of people who live in free societies think of totalitarian societies like China.

@Fergus - cheers for the photos, it's weird how the Beijing Olympic flag has become utterly substitutable with the Chinese flag - once Beijing is finished can the rest of the world have their Olympics back?

The Asian Sentinel video has proven to be a joke. First-hand eyewitness accounts are also available on our site:
http://blog.speak4china.com

Leah,

Appreciate your articulate and insightful comments above. I believe Bo Yang's comments are useful for the "Ugly Chinaman". Unfortunately, there are Westerners who've never read (or at least not understood) the book trying to use it as social commentary on specific contemporary events... and it simply doesn't fit.

But I will say one thing: I think Bo Yang would be pleased, excited about the display of unity being shown by Chinese world-wide in recent months. This was one trait of the "Ugly Chinaman" that perhaps we've learned to overcome.

Please drop us an email at the above site, perhaps you'd be interested in contributing to our blog as well.

No, in fact, the mainstream Western media have not "made up" anything about the torch relay in southern China.

I forwarded the Asia Sentinel story about Shenzhen to several reporters and editors at the International Herald Tribune / New York Times, and we did not end up writing anything, because we had no concrete proof. Honestly, it would have been "sexy news," that would have drawn more hits to our websites and sold more papers, but we did not report anything we did not see. The video was too inconclusive. If we do write something in the future, we would clearly quote the original source, so readers can decide for themselves.

Neither Western nor Chinese media is perfect, but in terms of "making up" (or hiding) facts from the public, the government-controlled Mainland media are far worse than Western or other Asian (Hong Kong, Japanese, Korean, etc) media.

When we're blocked from events, we say nothing, or try to quote local media.

It's ironic. Many Chinese bloggers (or those nameless people working at Xinhua) have used harsh language to accuse Western media (and, by extension, me) of being dishonest. But almost none who have called us "Nazis" or "plotters" or insulted my colleagues write under their own names. It is easy to throw rocks from the sidelines if one is anonymous. Following a Western media practice, I always write under my own name. It forces one to think before writing, and to take responsibility for one's words.

The only time we don't write under our own names is when there is immediate danger to the writer. I just spent all day in our Hong Kong newsroom tracking our two guys in Myanmar, who are risking their lives to get news out about those poor people. They will not write under their names now, so the military do not go out after them. Once they are out and safe, they can use their names again.

Western media is huge, and has its occasional fraud or plagarism cases. We make mistakes, but we do not deliberately make things up. If we write things that are unflattering or uncomfortable, it is because we think those are real problems that need airing.

Why has the Chinese Olympic torch relay gotten so much more press? Partly because China insisted on giving itself lots of "face" by holding the longest, biggest, most complex rally in modern Olympic history. Before, advisers warned Beijing that such a big show might draw negative attention, become politicized, or give protesters more opportunities. They were unfortunately right.

Secondly, because -- whether you agree with them or not -- protests did happen. And when protests happen, we report on them. Personally, I think the actions towards the disabled woman in Paris were awful, but I also think the Iraq war is awful, and George W. Bush is awful. But those are all high-profile events, so we put them in the newspaper. We let readers decide for themselves how to think.

Thanks Joyce, for the candid illumination on a journalistic mind.

I appreciate the professionalism in many western journalists. I only want to point out that there is an institutional problem in the symbiotic relationship between the PR practitioners and journalists, where information is "subsidized" to the journalists in favor of the "deep pockets," the media savvy, and the parties that are on the same ideological camp with the journalists. That is how the Tibetan cause has been so popular in the West: CIA money, exploiting the human rights discourse, the indigenous people's movement, and the transnational advocacy networks (So is the campaign "Dream for Darfur"). Not to say they have a charismatic leader who appeals so well to the college educated (and above), liberal minded, secular (and therefore spiritually insecure) middle-class global citizens. Me included.

I am not defending my government's heavy-handedness in Tibet at times. Yet if you read history more closely you will find Mao and Zhou Enlai had exerted enormous restrains, respected the Dalai Lama very much, and were sincere about giving Tibet maximum autonomy (if you need reference, email me at halo_freewill@yahoo.com). Establishing proletarian dictatorship was the order of the day, Tibet was no exception. Tibetan elites could not stand it; and the poorest would not succumb to "consciousness raising" efforts.... All in all, Buddhism has been there for more than a thousand years; the Communist Manifesto was only published in 1848.... Well, just my two cents.

No matter how hard China tries to build a positive image in the West, through sophisticated PR campaigns or what have you, it's going to take a long long time, if not totally impossible. It's big nation's curse (or blessing, esp. regarding setting low expectations). And no PR can save China if the leaders keep being so paranoid and totally deprived of imagination.

Sorry for rambling for so long. Some wisdom from Deng Xiaoping for everyone on earth: "Emancipate thinking and seek truth from facts."

China tour, the torch relay was invented by the Nazis to show off their superiority, so yeah, it's always been political.