China urges 'rational' protests - BBC

BBC

China urges ‘rational’ protests

China has urged its citizens to be calm amid further anti-Western protests in the country, focused on French supermarket chain Carrefour.

heads up: this is a pretty old post, it may be outdated.

The official Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, said patriotism should be expressed rationally.

They also accuse the West of supporting Tibetan separatists, and the Western media of bias.

—BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | China urges 'rational' protests

Sort of the anti-protest protest in China, I find this to be… ironic.

  • China has heavily state-controlled media. It censors the internet, specifically western news sources and sites (like wikipedia) that could contradict the State's version of events. Complaints about a western media bias are, needless to say, ironic.
  • there were less than 1000 protestors. in china, the most populace place in the world, the number '1000' doesn't mean much when it comes to people. it is a very weak show of force. 1,300 people protested in london in the same time frame against the alleged media bias. if londoners can gather that many people for this cause, than certainly, the Chinese conter-parts can at least match them in numbers. It's almost like a PR stunt by the State as a way to show that their people are behind them.
  • China has a history of stopping free speech that they don't agree with. Clearly, they allowed this protest to continue despite being "closely patrolled by police."

All that said. The right to protest and voice an opinion is a welcome improvement to China's state-controlled politics.