陈冰太平洋智库
陈冰太平洋智库

多年中国执业律师,太平洋智库创建人、CEO,中国、两岸、美中问题研究

Why do so many people defend China?

Chiu Yu


My case? I was born and grew up in Taiwan. I have never lived in China and know few people there, although I know its history, current events and language very well. I have been immersed in western media throughout my youth. My trust in it started at 100%, and now hovers at around 10-20%, mostly concentrated in the Food and Travel sections.

The reason I defend China is the same reason I would defend any other country as I see proper. I am a scientist by training, and have very low tolerance for mendacity, chicanery and disinformation, or in short BS, that I see so rampant in western media reporting about China. It helps that I bring logic, simple math, and comprehensive and diversified source of information to bear when I read them. You can’t imagine how much treachery, contradicted or disproportionate reporting, hyperbole, and double standard you can uncover in western media just by applying the scientific method plus common sense. Their reporting on China does not stand up to scrutiny by logic, common sense, or simple mathematics.

I know they have an unspeakable ulterior motive, which further offends my sense of morality, justice and fair play, a trait I find in most of my colleagues because being honest, objective and accurate is the top level requirement of a scientist.

Stories like a journalist being fired from Der Spiegel for positive reporting on China do not help either. I cannot stand hypocrisy and sleaze, much less dictatorship in the newsroom, which I think is driving the western media for unspeakable reasons. The reason it has fooled so many decent people in the West is possibly due to a cognitive barrier. For example, I believe the New York Times you read is really two different newspapers, one domestic and one international, with entirely different visions and ethical standards:

Chiu Yu's answer to Is there a real Western media bias against China as claimed by so many, particularly mainland Chinese?

My one-liner summary of the above link if you don’t have time:

Why should one assume that NY Times must be honest about China just because it is honest about Black voting rights?

Is there a western information source I trust? I guess there are no-nonsense professional sources targeting researchers in the field of international politics that tend to say things as they are. But these are not very accessible. At least I can’t find them easily. There are some imposters like Foreign Policy, or National Interest, which are even worse than New York Times, maybe for obvious reasons. There is one semi-main stream journal that stands out from an unexpected place: Physics Today and related newsletters published by the American Physical Society. They don’t talk politics all the time, but when they do, you can count on it as coming from supremely independent, confident, and fact based judgment and moral integrity. This is one publication that can make the western intellectual and moral tradition proud, because of a scientist’s fierce intellectual independence, moral clarity, confidence, pride, and obsession with truth, objectivity, and fairness. Consider this article by Professor Frank N. von Hippel of Princeton University on nuclear arms testing a few months ago.

Commentary: Transparency for nuclear weapons test sites

where it stated “….In the case of China, Los Alamos physicists visited the Chinese Lop Nor test site 10 times7

 between 1990 and 2001. The visits were to be reciprocated, but when the Chinese delegation arrived in the US, their permission to visit the US test site was vetoed in the Department of Energy, and they were given briefings at Livermore instead. Since then, the Chinese have not been interested in transparency unless the US goes first. ….

I could be wrong, but I think candid admissions like this will never show up in New York Times. It would already be fortunate if it does not ascribe all the blames for non-transparency on China! How do you make me trust mainstream western media?

Examples like this abound, if I just spend some extra time looking up better sources like Physics Today. This gets much worse if I also bring in news sources in Chinese, not only from China, but from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore etc. There you see how much news outlets like New York Times are hiding, distorting and misguiding with a clear intention. This is of course not to say I trust Chinese news outlets 100% either. It is only when one takes in all the news resources and apply critical thinking to them can one uncover the underlying mendacity.

So my short answer: I don’t defend China. I would like to defend any entity being smeared and demonized by western media, or any media, with unspeakable ulterior motives. At the moment it happens to be China, because it is taking the brunt of the smearing and demonizing, and I happen to have some advantage in doing the uncovering and rectification.


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