Why must there always be a pessimistic view towards China on matters like this?

This is not a programming error. News of this programming to be aired had been circulating on the net several days prior to the actual airing around various forums and weibo. People have taken screenshots of the official CCTV6 scheduling of V at least two days before airing. Hence if it was actually a mistake it would have been taken down already.

I am pro China no doubt and it just saddens me that most views towards China must always carry a doubting overtone. If something good is happening, we as Chinese people applaud it. We sincerely wish the West to do the same, rather than passing off every positive change that China is making as mistakes.

Perhaps I'm reading into your comment too much, in which case I apologize.

Perhaps we are all reading into the matter too much...China isn't as horrid as how Western media portral them.

> China isn't as horrid as how Western media portral them.

There's definitely a misconception in the west in this regard. I've lived 2 years in China, and I was surprised to learn how much freedom the common Chinese citizen has, in some instances even more compared to westerners.

In specific to this post, there is a lot of "dissident" cultural productions freely available. To just take an example of a recent movie that comes to my mind right now: "Let The Bullets Fly", a comedy-action where a Robin Hood-type thief tries to rob a village ruled by a criminal ruthless kingpin, supported by a corrupt governor. (spoiler alert) at the end, the hero organizes a militia, distributes guns to the entire village and takes over the village. It is absolutely clear this is a satire over current Chinese politics affairs, yet it was released as a major movie in cinemas everywhere.

Figures like Ai Weiwei only perpetuate this misunderstanding that China is some kind of North Korea, when in reality there's already a lot of "challenging" going on.

A movie about villagers rising up to overthrow a ruthless capitalist and his running dog governor? Yeah that'll never fly in communist china.

The point of my post was the censors allowing a movie that challenges the government.

Regarding your comment, you could read more about the Wukan protests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wukan_protests

Me thinks, perhaps, because in the West, knowledge of Tiananmen Square wasn't suppressed, and knowledge that knowledge of Tiananmen Square was suppressed in China is also not suppressed. Since there hasn't been a real change in Chinese governance since, there is no reason for the West to believe that when something is broadcast it makes its way into public view because of protected rights, as opposed to deliberate allowance, or simple negligence.

Actually, ironically, knowledge of the Tiananmen Square WAS indeed suppressed in the west. What we know is the single guy standing in front of the tanks. What we in the west did not know is that, in fact, the great majority of protesters were workers being oppressed by the "free-market" reforms being implemented at the time. In other words, the protests were basically against the oppression caused by the new westernized-style economy.

This was (is) suppressed in the western media because it goes against our narrative that protesters were fighting for democracy, when in fact they were protesting against the oppression created by the same system that we so much value.

EDIT: I forgot to include sources. Check the book "What Does China Think?" by Mark Leonard, and look for essays by Cui Zhiyuan, a Chinese philosopher who was part of the Tiananmen protests.

The "free-market" reforms being instituted at the time were the shedding of responsibilities of the Chinese state by "privatizing" state-constructed factories via the (often secret) sale of the factories to party members, in other words they went from statism to crony-nepotism. The workers were unaware that these sales were going on and that their state jobs were no longer guaranteed, nor were they part of the public pension system, but effectively serfs to regional power brokers of the party.

Transparency, end of state-party corruption, and the guarantees of political and economic freedom were pretty much what I remember being called for at the time during the news coverage. Tank man was right at the end just before everything went off the air, and has stuck in people's minds because he was just a dude coming back from shopping who decided he'd had enough.

You remember wrong. It was and is reported as pro-democracy protests, that were crushed by Deng Xiao Ping.

These were the seven demands drafted by the students in Beijing (from Wikipedia):

1. Affirm as correct Hu Yaobang's views on democracy and freedom; 2. Admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization had been wrong; 3. Publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members; 4. End the ban on privately run newspapers and stop press censorship; 5. Increase funding for education and raise intellectuals' pay; 6. End restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing 7. Provide objective coverage of students in official media.

I remember a very poignant image of a bunch of Chinese students building a replica of Lady Liberty.

Can you explain why this would have been the case if all they were concerned about was crony-nepotism and redistribution of profits or whatever it is you're saying.

Exactly my point... That's what we saw in the west (that's what the western media focused on), because it neatly fits the narrative of capitalism-as-freedom of our mainstream media. According to the sources I referenced above the educated students were actually a minority who joined the protests later. The huge majority (which was not the focus of the media) was made of peasants and factory workers pissed at the reforms.

If that's directed at my comments, then I wasn't stating they were protesting against the party-aristocracy, just that the "free-market" reforms were not free-market reforms, but the transfer of industrial ownership from the state directly to party members. I was taking exception to the definition of "free-market" as something that was neither free, nor a market.

I am curious about your viewpoint.

From my time as an economist working on trade in Asia, I always found it funny that most people have a fear or frustration with China because they are communist. However, having studied a good deal of the inner workings of the economy, my frustration with China is that they still claim communism, when they are actually more capitalist, albeit under a more controlling political system than most capitalist systems.

Out of curiosity, did the movie air with subtitles or over-dub, and do you know if all the translations were true to their original?

From the article: "Apart from the film title, its content had not been edited, as pointed out by the China Digital Times."

I imagine if there were changes (even if they were small) would have been called out.

TFA mentions that "Xi Jinping assumed office as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China on November 15th and he may have brought a more liberal attitude with him"...

Time will tell, I guess.

Somehow I doubt this. Only a few days ago when the news of school shooting broke out, China had a similar incident a day later where a man stabbed/injured 22 children. However, that story was quickly snuffed and the only place you could find out about it was on China's twitter (weibo). I doubt one man could easily hand over the reigns of the media.

Maybe it was suppressed but not for nefarious reasons?

Probably part of the reason that these attacks take place is due to the desire of the perpetrator to rip a big hole in peoples comfortable everyday existence. A response to this is to suppress news of these attacks. In a western democracy this is not really an option. I'm not saying that I think that these events should not be reported, but they are massively sensationalised by western media and this is not always necessarily helpful in the long run as it glorifies these acts in the eyes of future potential perpetrators when they see the impact they could have on public consciousness.

I don't want government censorship of the media, but I'm also not comfortable with the way the media behaves, speaking as a citizen of the UK. I don't know what the solution is to balance the two extremes.

I don't think the order would be "everybody is free to broadcast everything they want from now on", these things take time. An actual incident is an actual incident, a fantasy film is just that: a fantasy. Also, reactions to live events are much more "automatic" than broadcasting a film released years ago and that has, likely, cleared a number of censorship checks at high levels.

Interesting, I didn't know that story was buried. People have been advocating downplaying the role of the killer in the recent Kindergarten massacre and focusing on the victims in the fear that the attention paid to the killer would promote copycats. However, burying the whole Kindergarten story was not suggested.

How do you know it actually happened and that it was not just a false rumor spread on social media?

At least in China, the "people" network is usually more trustworthy than the major media outlets. I can understand from the western perspective that we should be doubting social media first. People were posting pictures of the injured children. It's possible that the photos were doctored, but I doubt anyone would go to great lengths doing it. Also, when you stab 22 children, I'm sure it will be big local news at least...

"At least in China, the "people" network is usually more trustworthy than the major media outlets"

Is it? When last I checked, the Chinese government paid tens of thousands of shills to post propaganda on blogs and forums.

> I can understand from the western perspective that we should be doubting social media first.

Should we? I have never seen a situation where social media were any less than an order or two of magnitude more trustworthy than traditional outlets.

Really? (with regard to in the west) Most of the social network 'news' I see is total crap. The stuff of chain-mails, rumour and heresay. When a major story breaks in the west the traditional media, despite biases in one way or another, seem to have the same pace and at least a much information.

Plus, I know who to blame when the information is wrong if it comes from a traditional outlet

I guess it depends what you categorize as social media. I think bloggers also fall into the social media camp. There's a very thin line between bloggers and journalists. Would you say the bloggers on huffington post talk chain-mails and heresy? I think in China the big name bloggers are probably equally respected as any journalist would be.

I'm slightly doubtful that someone would create a fake scene of 22 kids who got stabbed, for the purposes of social media juice.

I tend to agree with pretoriusB re the HuffPo. I also think bloggers/the new 'blogger-journalist' are more suited to investigative and opinion pieces rather than the breaking news o the day. Certainly you are right that there is a fine line between blogging and journalist.

With regard to 22 children stabbed, I agree that I don't think someone has made this up. But this is in china, not in the west, and as other posters have noted and I tend to agree having spent some time in china (well.. A couple kf weeks) that social media >> their state outlets. There are numerous instances of weibo being used to circumvent state censorship, despite being censored itself- the enterprising Chinese netizens use alliteration and 'read between the lines' to overcome this.

>Would you say the bloggers on huffington post talk chain-mails and heresy?

Huffington Post? That's the worst kind of BS blogging and bad journalism. If HP's your idea of "social media", then they are far worse than traditional media...

You have never seen a "chemical trails used to control thought", "revolutionary air fueled engine" and "this guy is sick now and needs blood before May 1999" on social media?