The source - the Daily Telegraph - is as respected as a London national daily can be (not a heck of a lot: maybe halfway on a scale ranging from National Enquirer to a SDMB thread). It’s a well-established, right-of-centre paper (owned by Conrad Black of Canada).
The story mentions the word “imprimateur”, which is ambiguous - does it really have a logo, or is this the reporter saying he has a hunch about the DVD’s provenance? Still, he quotes someone allegedly from the manufacturer, and the quote makes it pretty clear that the motive is … money. Such is communism today in China. (Last time I was in Shanghai I went to a punk rock concert - what would the Great Helmsman have thought??)
Seriously - if you think about it, there is no reason why the PRC Govt would want to be associated publicly with this. If the original poster thinks market forces are going too far in China, maybe he should email the article to the US Ambassador in Beijing, though I’m not sure whether he would be inclined to ask the Reds to step up the old censorship
I was earlier emailed parts of an article in the October 15, 2001 edition of The New Yorker by Peter Hessler called “Straight to Video: How the Attacks Are Playing in the Provinces.”
The article goes on to cite Chinese who have despaired at the callousness of the Chinese people.
True, if this were porn or advocacy of overthrowing democracy, the government would suppress it soon enough, but this time the Chinese government has been at pains to suppress the kind of nationalist fervor that Hemlock and China Guy talk about.
The Telegraph’s article stretches the truth a little by labelling this the work of “The Chinese state-run propaganda machine”–in fact, it’s more something produced satisfy the “market demand” the people at Beijing TV mention, and there are nationalistic elements in the government that are happy.
<nitpick> The Chinese system isn’t really Communism anymore; it’s just authoritarian, since the government is giving up centralized economic planning and control, and has pretty much given up on all goods being equally shared by the people, no matter what they say.<nitpick>
I would also point out that the “Chinese Government” is no more monolithic than the US government. It would be just to easy to blame the “US government” as a whole for actions of some of its officials (“US government says masturbation is good”). Chinese officials and parts of the administration may do things which may well not be in line with the general tone of the government (although Xinhua certainly can be considered to express the view of the government).
Also note that it is not necessary for the Telegraph to be lying for the news to be bad news. A lot of what one reads in the news is just plain garbage generated by ignorance rather than malice. Often reporters have little understanding of what they are reporting and they report in ways that fit into their own preconcieved notions. If you read news about America around the world you will see what I mean. It happens everywhere. People have a very superficial understanding of other cultures and the best remedy for this is to travel, make friends in other cultures, learn the language…
BTW, it seems they have opened up a bit with internet acces in China lately as I get reports that tripod, geocities and other previously blocked sites are now accesible. Let’s see how long it lasts.
I’d say your reports are incorrect. Still blocked as of a few minutes ago. Most people use proxy servers. I don’t because the one I did use quit being a proxy, haven’t found a new one yet, and almost every site I want including bloomberg, wall street journal, SCMP, far eastern economic review is very available.
Someone mentioned pornography earlier. I’ve ahem heard that just about every internet porn site is readily available.
I haven’t been able to get to the number one site for buying pirate stuff here in Shanghai yet. I have asked around with some of the angry young man with web access group, and none of them have seen the DVD for sale. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a chance to check it out.
Can you demonstrate at least the plausibility of the U.S. bombing the Chinese Embassy to Great Debate standards?
From a purely risk/reward point of view, bombing the PRC embassy would have next to no military benefit to the U.S., while at the same time would increase the risk of the destabilization of Russia. As such, it would seem to be a course of action which any reasonable strategist would reject out of hand. I can’t imagine Clinton or Cohen giving the go-ahead, and I can’t imagine Clark or Shalakishvili giving the green light on an operation with such momentus political consequences without clearing it with the President or Sec. of Defense first.
Your guardian link doesn’t work. And while I understand why your NATO consulant sources may not wish to be indentified, well–an anonymous source isn’t worth a crap unless there is some corroborating evidence to back him up. And you haven’t presented any reasons why your sources might have reached the conclusions that they did.
It strikes me as wild, irresponsible speculation on their part.
I don¡¯t really wan to go into this deeply for various reasons. However, to point you in the right direction, here are some new links to the original story in the Observer, then in sister publication the Guardian, and then the take by the Free Republic (don¡¯t know about these FR guys, but the Observer and Guardian are respected newspapers).
I can¡¯t find a source for the Clinton insider book that was published IIRC in Spring 2001 that also detailed his view that the embassy was deliberately bombed. Google searches come up with tens of thousands of hits. Don¡¯t think I hallucinated the review, but I can¡¯t find a cite.
As for plausibility, remember every major US military action in the past decade has been to first disable communications, radar and anti aircraft defenses. Then with clear daylight air freedom, bomb the hell out of the enemy. This was the MO for the Gulf War, Yugoslavia and now Afganistan. It has been put forth that the Chinese embassy acted as the communication center for the Serbs. Certainly the Chinese and the Serbs had a relationship (although I’ve never looked into how it was comprised). If true, then it was in fact important to control of the Serbian communications.
If true, then it would have made military sense to stop the embassy from acting as a communication center. It is likely that first there would have been an attempted diplomatic solution. When that did not work, it would have been a good opportunity to both complete the destruction of the Serbian communications and also put forth a strong message to China to reign in some overt military adventures. Yep, Clinton would have been in the loop on this decision. Plausible? Probable? Did it make sense given overall Sino-American relations? Way too much stuff to go into here and with all due respect one needs a certain level of understanding Sino-US relations to productively discuss this issue.
I’m puzzled as to how this would lead to a destabilization of Russia?
For what it’s worth, I went by two of the pirate DVD centers and couldn’t find the 911 DVD. I’ve also asked around some of the angry teenage/college kid/young professional/rebel without a cause set, and none of them have seen it.
I have to think that if it’s as big as the article makes it out to be, I would have been able to find a copy. Now, I will admit, I didn’t look all over Shanghai, but did hit a couple likely places and drew a blank. There ya go.
