Chinese Media on Ai Weiwei

Although news of Ai Weiwei continues to dominate headlines in Western media, there is virtually no mention of the artist’s recent detainment in Chinese news. Instead, the homepage of major newspapers like China Daily and People’s Daily are plastered with headlines such as, “China Pledges Better Conditions for Workers,” “China Improves Military Transparency,” “China to Combat Profiteering in Homeselling.” A quick typing of the name Ai Weiwei into the search engine of the People’s Daily website (often referred to as the mouthpiece of the CCP) produced articles only involving his artwork or exhibitions; nothing of his recent "arrest" was remotely published. Surprisingly (or maybe not), even the more liberal China Daily, seems to tell a different account of the circumstances surrounding the lock-up of Ai Weiwei. The same process of searching Ai Weiwei’s name on China Daily was done, and this time the search offered some interesting results. One was an opinion piece written by a senior writer at China Daily titled “Ideological Bias Cloud Western Views.” This particular journalist criticizes Western society’s inclination to characterize every incident in China that arises as a political one and subsequently transform it into matters of human rights issues. The journalist writes, “Ideological confrontation is the default mode for some Westerners and Western media when it comes to issues of human rights. For these people, it has become an intuitive reaction to point their fingers at China when anyone they consider a dissident is detained or arrested on legal grounds.” This is a point very well made. However, the article takes on quite the defensive tone; more than simply urging Westerners for greater understanding, the writer actively defends the course of actions taken by the government. In this way, while this article helps illustrate the fallacies embedded in Western media, it does not do a better job per se, at objectively discussing the issue at hand. The other article that came up was another editorial linked from the Global Times. In what seems to be a direct response to the New York Times articles I wrote about earlier, this editor dismisses phrases employed by Western media like “catch all crimes.” Unlike most articles in Western media, this article offers some background information and notes China's political development - most likely as a means to give Western audiences a multidimensional view of the circumstances at hand. Very much like the People’s Daily article, this piece seemed to largely defend the Chinese government by counter-reporting what’s been published so far by Western media. However, one thing that caught me offguard was the last sentence in the article, which seemed like a last minute attempt at claiming objectivity. To me, it seemed as though the sentence was tacked on so that the writer would not be deemed an apologist for the Chinese government. After all, he/she(?) is still writing/catering to a Western audience.