The Chinese are Coming

Has anybody seen this programme that's on the BBC at the moment? The programmes examines the spread of Chinese influence around the planet and asks what the world will be like if China overtakes America as the world's economic superpower. I just watched episode 2, and was amazed. Like most people, I have mixed feelings about China, but this programme was astoundingly unbalanced and anti-Chinese.

It relates to a serious and interesting issue, and I was hoping there'd be something I could use for my cultural communication class, but it was just a lot of unsubstantiated polemic, verging on racist.

One section had a bunch of unbalanced nutcases who believe that Chinese government funded Mandarin lessosns in the USA are an attempt for evil Communist China to corrupt the innocent minds of American youth, but the opposing point of view was given very little exposure. The message of the whole programme is that Communist China is spreading evil around the globe. Friends we've found the western equivalent of the China Daily bulletin boards.

I'm a big fan of the BBC, and their balance. I wouldn't mind (or even notice) if this kind of rubbish was on Fox News.

With that thread title, I expected something a little more .... personal.

I find that the issue of the spread of Chinese influence is a serious one and interesting. But unfortunantly I can NEVER find a book, news story, tv programme etc that isn't laughably and noticeably biased. It's like the war on terror is getting luke warm and now the west needs a new cold war and China is being set up as the "evil red opponent".
I once had an interesting conversation with my grandfather before he passes away, he was a German officer in ww2. He said that do people really think that they are the bad guys? At the time it's people that convince you that you are on the side of right or good or that things are justified at the time. When things go bad create a scapegoat or a foreign devil for everyone to stare at while you do something behind their back or distract them from what you are doing or have done. 
At the time it was really interesting for me because I had had no idea about how my grandfather could have done the things that he had done in the war. While my other grandfather had been my boyhood hero, a pilot in the air force during the war. Neither of my grandparents ever liked to talk about the war so I had to make my own assumptions which never gave me a full picture other than what you get in overblown war movies.

The BBC being subjective and presenting only one side of the argument? no! never. hahaha...

The BBC being subjective and presenting only one side of the argument? no! never. hahaha...

They aren't as bad as some others, though. I was in Iran during their revolution and media coverage was horrendous.

Time and Newsweek were wildly inaccurate, entirely unbelievable to anyone on the ground who had an idea of what was actually happening. The only print media I saw that was anywhere near correct was Paris Match.

As for broadcast, the joke among expats was that the US-run service and Radio Moscow were having a contest to see who could tell the most outrageous lies. I thought the Russians were winning, but not by much.

BBC World Service was a whole lot better, everyone;s main news source. Expats listened in English, locals in Persian and the Shah tried to block both. Of course they got some things wrong; the country was in chaos and no-one knew what was going on. But they were obviously the best source available, and by quite a wide margin,

Bravo Beeb & Britain, say I,

As a teacher of 'Newspaper Reading' for the past 2 years now, I am also bothered a lot by the western media in response to China. I mean, more than half of all articles about China mention T Sq. I mean yes, it was a bad thing and a bad time, and definitely relevant in specific areas, but it is brought up in so many unrelated articles it really bugs me. It would be like if every article about Japanese/American relations brought up the Japanese internment camps we set up, which they definitely don't do. (Hell, they barely teach that in schools even.) So yeah, the bias bugs me a bit too.

You just have to get used to it, its not like these double standards that are only applied to China's modernization and industrial revolution are anything new. It was Japan yesterday, and its China today.