I'm from one of the regions mentioned and I've literally never been discriminated against or heard of anyone else being discriminated against because of it. The article likewise called all Han Chinese racist three paragraphs in so yes I would consider it China Bashing.

I can get that meituan was biased against Henan people, that doesn’t seem far fetched at all, I’m much less convinced they were biased against dongbei people but I know nothing about working for any Chinese company (Microsoft China did not discriminate at all as far as I could tell).

If I "re-convey" a CNN story and start out with "White Americans are more than 60% of the population and their prejudice against ethnic minorities is well documented" nobody would consider it a neutral piece. The article is obviously editorialized.

>Of course, many Chinese call it China bashing if a Xinhua article is transcribed word for word in a western paper, and there is nothing we can do about that.

Is making hasty generalizations about Chinese people all you do or do you actually have a life outside of this?

For example, I was aware that Northeasterners are seen as a distinct group, but not in terms of external rejection, but rather internal cohesion, e.g. when one of my friends joked that hearing the Northeastern accent of his taxi driver made him feel almost at home.

I'm from the Northeast. Your initial assessment was the correct one. There is no external rejection of Northeasteners. Hearing others speak with a Northeastern accent is strangely reassuring though.

>"Common thing happens in China, here are the details" is interesting news for some people.

Except that's the issue, with articles like these the thing that's claimed to be happening are extreme cases but they make them out to be common. Because it's China nobody reading the Economist can smell the bullshit as they have no direct knowledge. I see it happen with Japan related news too.

^ So to be clear this is normal too?