China’s PR Self-Sabotage
A few months ago James Fallows wrote a piece for The Atlantic claiming that China's ham-handed efforts to repress dissent typically backfired in the form of bad PR. I too have always thought that China is a far more open and vibrant country than is portrayed in the media, which to a certain extent is subject to bias.
Yet the Chinese government too sometimes acts in ways that are indicative of its more totalitarian past. Case in point- Chinese television coverage of Barack Obama's inaugural speech.
CCTV provides a simultaneous interpreter for the occasion, and all was going along swimmingly until the new president reminded Americans that previous generations overcame the twin scourges of fascism and communism.
Suddenly, the interpreter- who translated the phrase correctly as far as I could tell- faded out and the live broadcast of the speech was interrupted by a rather startled news anchor, who asked an analyst a lame question about American economic "difficulties".
I agree with Jeff- had the broadcast just continued, nothing would have happened. I doubt millions of Chinese schoolchildren would have asked their parents pertinent questions of why communism- still the official creed of the PRC- would be something Americans celebrate defeating. The entire remark would have gone unnoticed. In effect, interrupting the speech made something out of nothing and reinforced the stereotype that China is a zero-tolerance zone.
