Perhaps it is the polite attitude of the people I have spoken with, but I only hear good things about America from the Chinese. Even when asked directly, they haven’t told me anything they find annoying about our habits etc. I am left to believe that they genuinely enjoy our friendly, outgoing nature, our straight-forward honesty, and our easy-going manners. Like them, we’d prefer to enjoy ourselves than stick to rigid rules – you can make a bit of a mess when you eat, it doesn’t matter which way you stir your tea, nor usually what utensil you use to get the food into your face.
I do know they don’t like Obama (nor Bush) – as he met the Dali Lama in the White House (though informally, and not in the Oval Office), he sold weapons to Taiwan, and his administration is pressing them on the value of the RMB as well as trade negotiations. I have yet to hear their reaction to our recent subs in their vicinity.
The state-controlled media might be part of the reason for all the compliments. They seem to put a positive spin on almost everything (as much as I can tell through the language barrier). They like to highlight what the Chinese Government – Federal, regional, or local – is doing to support and enhance the lives of the people. If this was all you knew of news coverage, I can only imagine how watching our news must make us look.
And then there’s this: An article about how the Afghans are training monkeys to fight against us and giving them AKs (you didn’t know of the vast great-ape population of the middle east? Neither did I.) Apparently this is an act of desperation on their part, as we have brought such better technology to the war. It’s also apparently a tactic we employed in the Vietnam War… I don’t even know what to say about this article; it might even be a joke.
State-Controlled Media
#1 written by andrea July 11th, 2010 at 00:56
huh, i was expecting this to be current news about your life not current events around the world,,,go figure