The western media feels guilty for spearing the Chinese. At least some of them do. After jumping all over the Tibet story from the Tibetan perspective — lambasting Chinese state media along the way — reporters are starting to look for Han Chinese living and working in Lhasa to tell the story from their perspective.
It will be interesting for them to compare the statistics and see if there truly is a government sanctioned immigration program afoot, in that the state gives incentives to the Han settlers large enough to equal or outweigh the incentives given to Tibetans as a registered minority. I don’t know about that … I will try and look for something.
It is unlikely that the western media will let off the heat, though. Especially when they feel the need to counter stuff like this in the Shanghai Daily:
“It’s the heart of the matter … Jin Jing, a disabled Chinese fencer and torchbearer, closes her eyes and holds tightly to the torch after an assault by a Western man who tried to snatch away her pride and joy.”
It’s getting emotional. The Chinese make themselves a target with their antiquidated PR campaign — a campaign that is just a step above North Korea’s government mouthpiece. But as my friend Jarret Wrisley says:
“As the Olympic torch flickers its way across continents, protestors have taken to the streets to condemn the treatment of Tibetans and other human rights violations. But what they fail to realize, beyond the sheer implausibility of a free, independent Tibet, is that most people here don’t really care what the rest of the world thinks. Dissent within has been crushed, and foreign media reports are dismissed as so much propaganda. It’s China’s moment, and no one can spoil it.”
