Anti-China Media Bias

This New York Times article ticked me off a bit. It wasn't a horrible subject. Except that it isn't saying anything new. China has been censuring the Internet for a long time now. But with Google leaving the country, the newsmedia seems to have noticed again. Reading the article you get China is a horrible place, where free speech is practically impossible, that's not the reality obviously. China is incredibly complex, and pretty much every opinion can be found, if one is willing to dig deep enough.

Chinese censorship works in a way that is very similar to western corporate media ownership. It doesn't completely erase all dissent, it just pushes dissenting voices far enough from the mainstream so that for a majority of people dissenting opinions are seen as marginal and unimportant. Obviously the Chinese government works in a more forceful way to impose its point of view. Reading the WikiLeaks site this week got me a bit distraught though. They claim to have been intimidated, and they were actually blocked in the US for a while after a judge ruled against them in a case brought forward by a bank.

All this to say that when I come to the US the anti-China message coming from the media always strikes me. I think Americans are a bit afraid of China. The political values in both countries are really different. The US was built on freedom of speech, religion, freedom to bear arms, a deep mistrust of government, freedom of enterprise, etc... China is a collectivist society. People accept the large presence of government in most affairs as natural. They do not believe that the individual is more important than society, and as such the individual should kind of "shut up" and be as they are told. People in China accept censorship, polls have shown this. People accept limited freedoms.

I read the introduction to Mitt Romney's book the other day while doing the groceries. He was talking about a short trip to China he made. He talked to students in Pekin University and he couldn't understand why they didn't revolt against their government, why they didn't follow in the footsteps of the Tiananmen protesters. He couldn't understand that people don't necessarily have the same values, and that some people can accept the loss of some rights, if it means a certain measure of wealth and security. The difference between China and the US is the level to which we are asked to make this compromise. People talk about a clash of civilization between the west and Islam, but Islam is really similar to Europe and the US. China takes things to another level on some aspects. People are afraid of difference, hopefully the fear won't become violent.