Stay calm in face of Western media’s reports

• Source: Global Times
• [07:16 July 15 2009]
• Comments

There is a nationwide protest among the Chinese public against some Western media’s biased news reports on the recent Xinjiang riots. For example, about 30 residents of Urumqi, where the deadly riots occurred on July 5, wrote a letter to the BBC expressing their unbearable anger toward its “distorted reports with no regard to the lives of ordinary people.”

Chinese people, including those traumatized during and following the riots, are irritated and even humiliated by the biased and untrue Western reports.

It is also frustrating to see few objective and unbiased reports after Chinese authorities actively assisted foreign reporters to enter Urumqi and held numerous press conferences to present the truth as fully and quickly as possible.

Anger and a sense of disgrace is a natural response to this but we really need to calm down and take a rational approach.

We have to accept the fact that the bias and hostility toward China in some Western countries won’t disappear overnight. We should be fully prepared and strong-minded in the face of such prejudice, which will continue for a really long time.

Apart from the Western media’s bias, we also face the deep-rooted distrust of some Western politicians who back overseas separatist forces which are running rampant. Rebiya Kadeer, head of the World Uyghur Congress, is believed by Chinese authorities to have masterminded the riots.

At a press conference yesterday, US State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said “I do know that her (Rebiya’s) organization does receive funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, which receives its funds from Congress.”

Some Western media and politicians already have their own judgments and interpretations even before anything happens in China. They believe that only the Chinese government’s system is to blame when incidents like riots happen in China. We must be clear that it will take a very long time to dispel the bias and distrust.

We often call for mutual understanding between countries and peoples. However, we have to admit that there are quite a lot of people in the world who refuse to understand others and stick to their stereotypes faithfully.

Meanwhile, we should do our utmost to take good care of our own business, which is the building of a more united, stable and prosperous China. We should be resolute when dealing with problems in our development and try everything to maintain law and order.

Only when we prove to the world with our success that we have made the right choices will people who used to speak randomly finally shut up.