If you’ve googled any day over the past few months to Google ‘China’ or ‘Olympics’, except for a few weeks when China has been hit by deadly earthquakes, you’ll be struck by negative coverage in the mainstream Western media. against China and hosted the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
As the Beijing Games approached, China had been under the microscope of the West for months, accusations and complaints against the country and its governments extended to all areas of major political issues such as Tibet, human rights, human rights, protest rights, the press and religion. . Freedom. ; on social issues, including air pollution, the movement of Beijing residents by the government; about conspiracies about the special visual effects of the opening ceremony and the supernatural performance of Chinese athletes; and more minor dissatisfaction with the loss of expensive sunglasses, the difficulty of accessing Olympic Green, the English standard of volunteers and the excessive zeal of residents to help foreign visitors. The list is expanding.
As if that weren’t enough, an NBC correspondent in Beijing filmed Chinese food live. Let’s see what she found: giant scorpions, lizards, mulberry silkworms, seahorses, tails of iguanes and beetles. Other Western journalists also mentioned the rabbit’s head, pig’s brain and animal penis. As a resident of Beijing, where I have lived for more than 20 years and adore myself, I am not sure where to look for these exotic things, let alone to eat them. Come on, china’s 5,000-year-old civilization – Western journalists can’t seriously treat the Chinese as barbaric Aboriginal or cannibalistic, right?
Dave Barry of the Miami Herald even admitted in a blog post beijingboyce.com that “all the Chinese I saw seemed to buy things like lamb on a spit and fruit. On the other hand, people gathered around centipedes and scorpions on a stick, almost in all cases were tourists or American TV journalists, making funny films about strange Chinese dishes … The Chinese don’t eat scorpions.
Of course, China is not entirely innocent of most of the above accusations and criticisms, but it is also a good host who does not deserve praise. Since it is the fastest growing economy in the world and one of the oldest civilizations in the world, we need to report something positive.
However, you can easily be disappointed if you want to read something more positive or at least constructive about the country and its hospitable people. Of course, there is always official news xinhua or China Daily that you can read for a change, but any praise from traditional independent Western media and self-proclaimed goals is surprisingly hard to come by.
Meanwhile, it is difficult for the average Westerner not to mislead the negative coverage of events in China. A housewife from the United States told reporters she did not want to “legitimize the Chinese government” by supporting the Beijing Olympics. Hasn’t President Bush just opened a larger American embassy there? What exactly are we talking about here? Surprised how a man from Atlanta demanded an answer online, because The Russian tanks were not visible.
While I disagree with President George W. Bush on many points, I should welcome his recent TV interview in Beijing with NBC, in which he pointed out that both the two very different countries and cultures the United States of America and China undoubtedly have similarities and differences. about a number of things, but it is important to have constructive relationships that help each other express differences.
Wow, I wish he had that wisdom before I started the war in Iraq — some 1.2 million Iraqis and 5,000 American soldiers could have been saved.
Should the 2008 Olympics be given to Beijing in the first place?
As the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics draws a few days, the debate over whether the IOC made a mistake in hosting the 2008 Olympics and whether China kept its respective promises appears to be falling apart.
Why choose a heavily polluted country dictated by “free-market Stalinists” who oppress human rights, religion and the press? China has broken its IOC promises in all these areas, western media have accused.
Does China deserve to be accepted at the Olympics? Apparently, the Chinese people said “yes” out loud. The whole world witnessed the tremendous support that China received from its people when they signed up and won the right to participate in the event.
As a country with more than a fifth of the world’s population, shouldn’t it be able to host one of the many games? Can the 1.3 billion-person Olympics really advance its mission to “build a peaceful and better world based on mutual understanding”? That is why the IOC has made its decision, and it is undoubtedly the right one.
By comparison, I seriously doubt that the leading Western media really understand and respect the spirit of the Olympic Games – the question of China’s legitimacy to hold such an international event only betrays arrogance, complacency, justice and cultural superiority in international affairs.
If the leading Western media continue to be true advocates of human rights and support the universal belief that “all human beings are created equal”, they must recognize the birthright of every country, including China, to host the Olympic Games.
While China, like any other country on the planet, needs improvements in many areas, the changes and progress that the country has made over the past 30 years are unprecedented in its own history and cannot be hidden in full view of the mainstream Western media. .
China should not be forced to make concessions or promises to interested groups in order to gain the host country’s right to the Olympic Games, thanks to the fall of colonialism and imperialism! The will to reform the country on all national political and socio-economic fronts, including, but not limited to, human rights and the freedoms of people, can and should be motivated only by the wishes of its own people, not by external forces.
In addition to challenging China’s hosting rights, the mainstream Western media are also broadcasting numerous conspiracies about China’s intention to host the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Inside yourself? To promote china’s development path to replace the American model?
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