A tale of distortions and fabrications

The Arab world is in turmoil recently. After the so-called Jasmine Revolution toppled the Tunisian government, political upheavals first rocked Egypt and then Libya. Unrest is also plaguing Bahrain, Syria and Yemen. Indeed, social disorder is now the order of the day in that part of the world.

Under such a context, a few news organizations with ulterior motives and some unscrupulous journalists are just too happy to see China descend into similar chaos.

Unfortunately, they always end up disappointed, since protests, demonstrations, riots or street conflicts, whatever they may call them, have always been as elusive as extraterrestrial life.

Unwilling to concede defeat and return home empty-handed, as customary, they have to resort to a not so above-board means to discredit China and stir up dissatisfaction with China among their own people, by fabricating the so-called facts.

Let’s look no further than Taiwan’s Liberty Times, the separatist mouthpiece for the island’s opposition “Democratic Progressive Party”. While a photo purportedly shows “protesters went on to street to call for freedom under a report headlined “14 said to have been arrested in China’s Jasmine Revolution” (February 20, 2011), they are in fact employers who are holding placards and trying to recruit migrant workers. You don’t even have to look closer: a rudimentary grasp of simplified Chinese is more than enough.

What makes the episode more outrageous is that major news agencies including the AFP actually reproduced the same photo, quoted the caption verbatim and filed the report without any checking. People who don’t know Chinese can, of course, be easily fooled.

Another photo that is in fact about Taiwan separatists’ protest is presented, again by AFP on February, 24, 2011 as “Jasmine revolution in China” – coincidence? Yet another photo that actually shows a demonstration staged against Japan in Beijing in 2005 is used by Online USA News on February, 24, 2011 to show that Chinese in the “Jasmine Revolution demand freedom of speech”.

More examples and counting.

As a matter of fact, this is not the first time that these news organizations – largely Western papers and news websites – have distorted facts about China and misled their readers. They were behind the riots of Tibetan separatists on March, 15, 2008; their shadows closely followed the Uyghur separatist unrest on July 5, 2008; and they were never far from every move that tried to sour the party atmosphere during the Beijing Olympics.

Isn’t this calling white black? Where are the integrity, fairness and objectivity that these media never fail to preach to people? Do they really have the credibility they claim they have?

Indeed, ample evidence shows that the Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution is fermented by none other than those mainstream Western or pro-Western media. Provocative statements agitating demonstrations in Tunisia can still be found on major social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Poor Ben Ali, former president of Tunisia, took all the blame, while in fact the Western media should have taken full credit.

Now, it is China’s turn to face and debunk these fabrications. Well, didn’t China have to deal with all these distortions every time a “color revolution” swept across a certain part of the world? The West has never stopped trying to ship their values into China and the Chinese mind.

The Chinese society is stable and, if truth be told, the Chinese people enjoy stability. They, after all, have suffered so much from turmoil and chaos in the past. On the other hand, fabrications will only be, well, fabrications – they will never become facts and truths. Any such attempt to derail China's stable development is doomed to fail.

Note: Please click the link to see the fake photos.