So over the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of international press coverage about the tragic – and quite simply horrific – story of a little girl who was run over in a Chinese city and then ignored by multiple passers-by, despite writhing in agony and suffering from obvious serious injury.
Quite rightly, the press has been scathing about the people who didn’t run to her aid … it’s a disgraceful and unfathomable thing … however rather than report the situation neutrally, I can’t help but feel the press have extended their judgement of who is to blame to more than just the people involved in the incident, but to China as a whole.
Almost every report reads like China is full of cold and heartless bastards … a bunch of unemotional, uneducated, unsophisticated savages who care for nothing other than their own well being.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a total and utter tragedy and there’s no excuse for it whatsoever – a view, I should add, that is shared by all of China as well – however I can’t help but feel the way the international press have latched on to this incident with such vengeance highlights how scared the West is of China’s growing wealth and influence when they should be promoting how we should/could be working closer together.
China is a lot of things … good, bad, ugly and weird … but to imply over a billion people are heartless and cruel is unbelievably heartless and cruel.
And wrong. Very, very, very wrong.
But the thing that really fucks me off is how the international press are basically acting like all their own examples of social disgrace didn’t exist.
In the last few years both the UK and the US have had episodes that have been equally – if not more so – horrific and yet there’s this “tone” being presented in the media that the West is civilised society and China is this raw and ugly beast that cannot be trusted.
Please don’t think I am trying to make an excuse for the horror that happened last week – I’m not and neither is anyone in China – but I still find it incredibly hypocritical and disgraceful that the foreign press are acting as if their own society is perfect.
What they’re doing is basically stoking up the fires of prejudice and if that means exploiting a horrible and tragic act to justify it, so be it. The absolute total bastards.
I hope people are smarter than to believe all they read in the press, however judging by the comments I follow on the articles being written, it would appear that there’s quite a lot that do.
This is the shame we should also be highlighting.