I thought I should reply to your comment. Sorry this is going to be brief.

Like I said I have not monitored the New Zealand media very closely.

I notice though that Chinese netizens were unhappy with how Sunday’s pro-Olympic demonstration in Auckland was reported on TVNZ. The Tibetan protesters did get a big chunk of the segment. However, the Tibetan protesters main comments were praising the efficiency of the Chinese demonstration organizers. The segment ended with a joke about how the Tibetan protesters would be going home for Chinese takeaways (i.e. no hard feelings - despite having been punched in the head by violent Chinese). Considering the demonstration was quite violent and ugly at times (I was attacked and had to leave - and I wasn’t even protesting), I thought the TVNZ coverage was upbeat and positive - if a bit cheesy. However, Chinese were still unhappy.

The media coverage of Tibet I have seen in New Zealand has mostly been superficial. There has been nothing much on Tibetan history.

Of course the newspapers here have talked in terms of China ‘invading’ Tibet in the 1950s. Maybe you prefer to talk about it as ‘putting down a rebellion’. I would say the truth lies between these two views. That is, Tibet had never been part of a ‘Chinese nation’ until the 1950s. Tibet had been part of a Qing Empire, and had enjoyed de facto independence following the fall of the Qing. Belonging to an empire is a different thing to belonging to a nation. I am not splitting hairs here. I honestly think this fact cuts to the heart of the Tibetan problem.

Tibet has been a part of Chinese empires before (or should I say Manchurian and Mongolian empires?). However, Tibet only became part of a Chinese nation 50 years ago. Empires merely demand their subjects obey. Nations demand their citizens to love them. The Han Chinese are having a hard time making Tibetans love them. Many Tibetans don’t ‘feel Chinese’. This is the Tibet problem.

So what am I saying here? I guess I am saying that these issues are complicated. The western media has had some problems in its coverage. Is it ‘anti-China’? Yes and no.

In some cases you can say the western media is almost pro-China. For example I feel the coverage of Taiwan is generally lousy, and that the bias usually favors the PRC. The reason? Beijing based western journalists are too lazy to really learn about Taiwan and they write their stories from a Beijing perspective.

So I think being critical is useful. By all means criticize the western media. But at the same time criticize yourself and what you think. Things are never simple.

I will e-mail you later. Things are a little busy right now. Thanks for offering to allow me back onto the Sky Kiwi website though.

The guy who an angry phone call to your office was probably me. If you read the follow up post to this one (link towards the end of the article) you will hopefully understand why I lost my cool at that point. When I made that call, Sarah Li (who I had been trying to track down for several days and had left several messages for) had just lied to me about having returned my call, said she had no obligation to return my call anyway (so why lie and say she had done it?), and hung up the phone on me twice. Then I tried talking to your offices again and was told that Sky Kiwi would not communicate further about the matter by phone (if this was the case why had you been taking my phone messages and giving me cell phone numbers?). After that I was told that I should write to your lawyers! Apologies (especially to whoever was taking the call) for losing my temper at that point, but it was the culmination of several days of genuinely attempting to resolve things with you and getting absolutely nowhere.

One guy, Wayne I think it was, was very helpful in terms of diffusing things on the site though.

I am not sure how you found my site. The timing of you appearing here makes me assume there is a connection to a cameraman having filmed me getting assaulted while observing the ‘peaceful demonstration’ this afternoon. I gave the address of my site to the guy with the camera. Perhaps his company is somehow connected with you guys?

Of course maybe it is just a coincidence and everyone reads my blog these days.

pls email to justin@skykiwi.com

After going through your article, allow me to make a suggestion that if you want to make yourself heard among the Netizans on skykiwi or any Chinese websites under the current circumstance, you need to tone it down a little bit. You have lived in shanghai yourself so i assume you would know after all the recent media coverage about Tibet and Olympic by the west, not many of Chinese would welcome or show interest in debates you have brought up at the moment.

That said, we do have a lot of debates going on within the Chinese netizans about the way to express patriotism. I have personally seen some people brought up some interesting and constructive thoughts.

But i shall once again point out that after all the recent media distortions, i believe it is fair to say that not many chinese people would actually like to sit down and discuss this peacefully with you.

In short, your timing isnt right.

(Btw, i was told a guy made an angry phone call to our office, yelling and swearing in English to one of the girls in the office about his account being banned, havent got the full story yet, hope it wasnt you though.)

You can say there is little hard evidence that the New Zealand media been biased. I am not in New Zealand so I can’t tell if it is. But just let me ask a few questions:
When the NZ media report the Tibetan roits, did their report sound differently to any other western channels, like BBC or CNN?

Did they bother to research the history of tibet or did they say China invaded Tibet in 1950s(Which is not true)?

When the torch rally was in London, did they praise or at least focus on the “free tibet” protestors? Did they even boher to mention there was also thousands of Chinese people welcoming the torch in London on the same day too?

My personal experiance is in Ireland the media failed to respect Chinese people’s feeling. On April 12th we had about 2000 people demostrating our support to a politics free Olympics. Not a word was messioned on any newspaper or Television, except a photo of a single protestor, despite the organiser’s effort to invite the local tv channels. Half an hour later a group of about 150 pakistani protestors went on street and they were at least reported by the local news channel here.

Similar story happened in many many cities around the world. We suddenly realised that our opinions, as long as they are pro-China, were systematicly ignored, despite our large number. The more we are ignored, the angrier we get. The end result is, now more Chinese people are interested in nationalism than ever before.

The NZ media does not have to make up their own biased story to hurt our feelings. They hurt us as long as they ignore our side of the story.

By the way, when you visit the Chinese site, did you see all the debates on what is the right way to protest? If not, I suggest you to visit http://www.wenxuecity.com or http://www.6park.com, most oversea Chinese use these websites to gether information and debate. I don’t know anybody who cares to use our local chinese bulletboards anyway.

Thanks for the (sarcastic?) comment.

Unfortunately I don’t understand your questions. Maybe you need to carefully re-read what I wrote?

I will respond to your questions as best I can though.

Your first question was: “Have you even bothered to look for proof, ie. eyewitnesses’ posting and video clips, that what happened in Tibet is not an organized riot?”

I have looked at the eyewitness accounts of the riots. But my opinion of those accounts is irrelevant to my article above.

I said that riots happened in Tibet. I never speculated on whether the riots were organized or spontaneous. I simply said riots ’somehow’ occurred.

Yes, the riots may have been deliberately organized, or they may not have been. They may have been been an unfortunate response to excessive police action, or they may not have been. There are claims and evidence to support both possibilities. Would you be happier if I said the riots were deliberately organized? Wouldn’t the question then become who organized them and why? While the Chinese government is accusing the DL of organizing the riots, many overseas Tibetan activists are accusing the Chinese of organizing them. Concluding the riots were organized just makes things even more controversial!

Personally I think both sides are making stupid accusations. However, that is not important here because my article did not express my personal opinions of what happened in Tibet. My article was about the behavior of Chinese protesters, netizens, and media.

I prefer to stick to the uncontroversial facts - i.e. the things that everyone agrees on. Everyone agrees that first there were peaceful protests, then there were violent riots. I wrote exactly that and speculated no further.

Your second question was: “Do you care at all if there are elements of truth in Chinese media?”

Of course there are elements of truth in the Chinese media. When you say ‘care’ are you really asking me whether I accept this? Of course I accept it. How could any rational person believe that the Chinese media ONLY reports untruths? I consider the Chinese media extremely biased on certain issues, but like any media it reports a great deal of true information (even on those areas where it has a bias).

Does that answer your questions?

Feel free to browse the rest of the site and find yourself a drink. This place is really about cocktails, not politics.