The daily certainly has improved a lot since it started some good 25 years ago and gives a fair overview of international news. Better even is its website. Still, reading it remains an art to understand what can be written, what is taboo and how the government wants its image to be. So, one needs to “read between the lines”. Or scrutinize what is left out.
A good example is the coverage of the British sailors being captured (or should we say – kidnapped?) by Iran. China Daily diplomatically leaves out that the UK has satellite data to prove the ship was not in Iran territory and that the sailors were on a mission to intercept smugglers. Basically a UN mission. That would too clearly prove the Iranians are wrong. But that would not be nice for the “Iranian friends” (definitely not MY friends, a government trying to go back to medieval times and just create trouble). Obviously news about “some” African countries going through pretty hard times is also filtered. Not exactly good PR for China but of course they have another opinion. Fortunately we have other sources to know what is really going on…

The former House speaker who joined the crowd to viciously attack Bill Clinton over the Monica affair? Well, he now admitted in an interview he was having an extramarital affair exactly at the same time. Hypocrites, guys like Newt. Still feel much more sympathy for Bill, at least he was more of a normal human being. And more competent, that being the easy part – what cannot be said of certain “others”. Newt, belongs to the same category that do gay bashing while flirting around with boys, or attack drinking while living on the bottle. I still prefer for this matter countries like France where the private live (and mistresses) are of little concern to the public. Or even China – all is swell as long as they don’t show it off too much or have too many mistresses at the same time. Or offend the wrong people. Going back to the McCarthy story, some of the key people turned out to be not very straight either and liked the bottle a lot. Of course that sounds very familiar in many other countries. And, as said, at least in the USA they can talk about it and make movies. Years later, of course.

Jiang Jian, president of China Red Cross Qufu Hospital and NPC deputy: “A good nation is one that does not forget history”. (China Daily 16/3/07)
Of course he was referring to Japan and its (renewed) denial of the horrible things they did over sixty years ago, upsetting not only China but other countries in the region. I don’t understand them. They have a lot to learn of the Germans. On the other hand I think some individuals over here must be very happy with the stubbornness of those Japs. So, nobody will have time to sit back and wonder why here there is not stubbornness but general amnesia (imposed by you know who) over their own history. See an early entry on this blog on what “expressions” are forbidden in the media. Just imagine people asking for justice, indemnification and clarification for the many who were tortured or lost their lives and possessions during the fifties and then the seventies (so, much more recently!). Too many innocent victims.
History, according to Jiang, must be very selective indeed. It’s like pages are ripped out of history books. One day it will come back. Will it? Sometimes I wonder. Chinese tend to forget their own history unless it involves “bad” foreigners.
Not that China is alone. Selective memory exist in other countries, even in the USA. Remember McCarthyism (Joseph McCarthy), prohibition, imprisonment of innocent people of Japanese descent, etc. On the other hand, Hollywood makes movies about all that, to be fair; one would never see this over here. Indeed, just saw a movie on HBO about Joseph McCarthy (“Citizen Cohn”*), quite scary as it reminds me too much of what happened here in the seventies.
Some notes:
Wanted to check out Joseph McCarthy on Wikipedia but it was “unavailable” (again!). Yeah, yeah. But as we say in China, there is a “backdoor” for everything. Seems the debate about that witchhunting period is far from concluded. Even the Kennedy clan liked him. Figure that one out.
*In 1952 McCarthy appointed Roy Cohn as the chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. Cohn had been recommended by J. Edgar Hoover, who had been impressed by his involvement in the prosecution of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg] [see: www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmccarthyism.htm] (this one was “available” here without backdoor)