The World Journal Weekly published on May 24, 2015, an article entitled “US and British reports on China lacking objectiveness and fairness” written by Leng Hongseng (冷鴻升). The author taking the US and British reports on the Chinese military as an example criticized the Western countries for making comments out of political motivation in these reports with distorted facts which lacked objectiveness, fairness and rationality.

Some people have praise that Western democracy, freedom, equality, justice, and universal values, and that media exercise oversight over those values, etc. I think these are childish nonsense, meant to deceive themselves and others.

Please just take a look at the so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine some years ago. There were tens of thousands of demonstrators in Kiev protesting for a few days. The US television stations broadcast on this the whole day and every day. Soon afterwards in Taipei, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators against Chen Shui-bian (the incumbent political top leader in Taiwan) wearing red shirts poured into street and stayed there for a few weeks. Yet, none of Chicago's major newspapers or several television stations cared about this.

In early 2008, just few Tibetans and a few Americans in a small Chicago park demonstrated to support Tibetan separatists, which was reported by some radio stations. Not long after that in San Francisco the Olympic torch relay was obstructed by Tibetan separatists and a few Americans. When CNN reporting the incident, the anchorman said those Chinese people were thugs. The report caused nationwide Chinese protests against CNN. In downtown Chicago there were four to five hundred Chinese protesters. But during that night in Chicago, not one television station reported on that demonstration. The next day, the Chicago Sun-Times, one of the two major Chicago newspapers, did not report on this protest, and neither did the other newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. But the latter published a photo of a demonstrator with the description "Many in the rally say political issues concerning Tibet, human rights and inequality should not be factors in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.” See, how sinister! Not only did it not say that the demonstrations originated in CNN’s insult on the Chinese, but it also expressed clearly that China had problems in human rights and Tibet issues, but the Chinese people did not want to resolve them.

Commenting on Chinese railway construction reaching Lhasa, the US media said that the Chinese government destroyed Tibetan culture and ecology. Commenting on the Chinese rescue teams rushing to the earthquake disaster area in Yushu, Qinghai, in less than 24 hours, the US newspapers offered no praise, but mentioned that the victims complained.

There was a television program discussing how to deal with discarded twist-shape-energy-saving-light- bulbs. These light bulbs are like the fluorescent tubes which had mercury inside and must be handled with care so as not to pollute the environment and harm people. During the discussion, an official from Washington said: "99 percent of this kind of light bulbs are made in China." In fact, no matter who was the manufacturer, we have to properly handle them. But it is clear that the Washington politicians and the media took the opportunity to deliver a message to the majority of Americans that "Chinese people are very evil. They make these toxic things to hurt us." The truth is, the Chinese people make great sacrifices to produce goods attractive in price and quality so that the majority of Americans could have a more comfortable life. But the American politicians and media do not thank the Chinese people, but insidiously spread message about the Chinese are evil people. Where is justice?

In 2012, after Japan provoked trouble on the Diaoyu Islands, the Wall Street Journal had an editorial saying that the Diaoyu Islands belong to Japan; it was the Chinese authorities who wanted to provoke the dispute to divert the domestic attention. I wrote a letter to correct them and expressed my criticism. Of course it was not published. The reason was simple. They not only controlled the freedom of speech of speaking nonsense, but also had the power of not posting my correction and refutation. Thus it can be seen that the media and the politicians were like villains colluding together to control people. So, if we go through the so-called democratic process to ask the American people and politicians to discuss and decide issues related to China, can we expect the results to reflect values like true democracy, freedom, equality, and justice?

Yi-Cheng Chang 06-15-2015