Apparently the revolution won't be televised in China. Egypt not trending in China Beijing blocks searches for "Egypt" from microblogging site following protests there. China has blocked the word "Egypt'' from the country's wildly popular Twitter-like service, while coverage of the political turmoil has been tightly restricted in state media. China's ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any potential source of social unrest. A search for "Egypt'' on the Sina microblogging service brings up a message saying, "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown". The service has more than 50 million users. News on the Egypt protests has been limited to a few paragraphs and photos buried inside major news websites, but China Central Television had a report on its midday broadcast. China's foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment Saturday on the events in Egypt. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2011/01/201112991712140318.html
I am curious as to why the Chinese state media is refusing to cover this (fear of violence in the Muslim region?). If one thing we can learn from the various unrest in the Middle East is that the economical situation dictates all social unrest. Tunisia had a 14% unemployment rate while Egypt had 10%, China on the other hand have only a 4.1% unemployment rate. I think the Chinese government have realized that people value the economy over the various social freedoms.
Not saying you have to pick one, but people will put up more with a lack of social freedom when the economy of that region is strong. When the economy is bad then you'll see more social unrest.
Apparently you are wrong. http://english.cntv.cn/news/world/ I believe this is the official website for CCTV (at least this is where google directed to). There are plenty of news stories here about the Egyption revolution, and at least you can see videos about Egypt online. Chances are these videos are also shown on TV.
If you are interested in reading Chinese, here is one of the Sina microblog live feeds about the Egypt revolution, which shows up immediately if you search for Egypt on t.sina.com.cn. http://t.sina.com.cn/1916783740 Search for content is disabled on t.sina.com with keyword Egypt, but there are numerous news stories, videos etc about the subject on Sina.com itself. It's not like no one in China would even know there's a revolution going on in Egypt.
China will not run into the North America situation right now. But what's happening there should serve very good lesson to the Chinese leadership what might happen in foreseeable future if current hot issues in China are not dealt with correctly. In many ways, from what I read, political operations in Tunis, Egypt are parallel to that in China. But China's hyper growth in GDP suppress a lot of heat from the Chinese people. Once the master planning, high public investment growth cannot be sustained, then what?
Just now checked People's Daily Chinese version. No Egypt news was reported. CCTV had the news that Mummies were raided by the mob, none else. Chinese media usually harp on irrelevant international news development very quickly, much more so than China's important domestic issues.
China's news bias has less to do with foreign/domestic as much as good news over bad news. I think one can think of it as the polar opposite of American news. One likes to talk about how everything's fine and you just need to smile. The other want you to believe that breathing will kill you.
I was speaking in relative terms, not absolute terms. I know that even US news will fill in a few boy-save-puppy stories in between how-X-will-give-cancer stories to not make it 100% negative. I was speaking about the overall "tone" of news. As in what the audience feel after watching. Which would be Positive for Chinese news, and negative for American news. Even negative news in China is done in a more neutral tone than what you find in the US.
China has a good model, modernizing their economy before modernizing their political system. The collapse of the USSR was a cationary tale for them. Sooner or later political modernization will be coming to China, but I think they worry more than they need to about instability. While they've got the gravy-train going, they'll be fine.
10%? We have 10%! But, there's more to social unrest than just economics. Look at some of the countries with higher unemployment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate
Step 1: Go to news.sina.com.cn Step 2: Click on "International" tab at top First article right at the top: http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2011-02-01/063221908226.shtml Third article from the top: http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2011-02-02/073621911848.shtml Sixth article from the top (on Yemen): http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2011-02-02/055821911551.shtml Eight article from the top: http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2011-02-02/051221911547.shtml Video links on the top left tab: Second from top: http://video.sina.com.cn/p/news/w/v/2011-01-30/003061250311.html Third from top: http://video.sina.com.cn/p/news/w/v/2011-01-29/232061250303.html Fourth from top: http://video.sina.com.cn/p/news/w/v/2011-01-29/125761250025.html Fifth from top (on Jordan): http://video.sina.com.cn/p/news/w/v/2011-01-29/115061249871.html Trending/most popular news section in the lower left tab: Most popular: http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2011-01-31/060021902904.shtml Fourth most popular: http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2011-01-28/124221890805.shtml Sixth most popular: http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2011-01-29/071321894810.shtml Disclaimer, the trending news section is updated daily, so actual ranking may differ from it as of time of this post. Oh yeah, Egypt is DEFINITELY NOT trending in China. I'd say you and Al Jazeera is full of ****, but what else is new? Azadre never left facts get in the way of his bullsh1t before, why start now?
Oh btw, big news right on the sina news site, right at the top left, with big pictures and everything, Chinese citizens getting airlifted outta Egypt. http://slide.news.sina.com.cn/c/slide_1_2841_15173.html#p=1
Four days after the story breaks, you come in on your dragon with links from Sina from today. Al Jazeera correctly reported that Sina was blocking the term Egypt from being searchable. I feel bad for you MFW.
