Assuming that of them certainly sells the people of China short, not to mention the complete lack of agency you seem to believe the people that actually live in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, etc had in deciding to revolt in the first place. It's not clear what your personal belief is here (you're only reporting on the "context", after all), but you've repeated the libya arms thing enough that I'll assuage your fears: look back through history. Nation building by rebel proxy does not work as intended. You only have to look at your so called new "US-controlled democracies" to dispel any idea of US control.
Meanwhile, the new york times reported on corruption in those around Wen Jiabao, and the Chinese government hacked into their systems apparently so they could find out who provided information to the reporters and how they got the information that they did. It's a silly strawman to suppose that "without this context Americans just don't understand why the Chinese military would get involved on a negative story about a leader." No, it's extremely clear, and I think few here were very surprised.
the complete lack of agency you seem to believe the people
that actually live in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, etc had
in deciding to revolt in the first place.
Egypt's revolution provided the first hurdle. Obama was
criticised for backing stability as the drama of Tahrir
Square unfolded. But on 1 February came his call for
Mubarak to step down "now". As the New York Times wrote:
"Obama upended three decades of American relations with its
most stalwart ally in the Arab world, putting the weight of
the United States squarely on the side of the Arab street."
look back through history. Nation building by rebel proxy
does not work
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewante...
“We learned how to organize and build coalitions,” said
Bashem Fathy, a founder of the youth movement that
ultimately drove the Egyptian uprisings. Mr. Fathy, who
attended training with Freedom House, said, “This certainly
helped during the revolution.”
At one time the United States financed political reform
groups by channeling money through the Egyptian government.
But in 2005, under a Bush administration initiative, local
groups were given direct grants, much to the chagrin of
Egyptian officials.
The Egyptian government even appealed to groups like
Freedom House to stop working with local political
activists and human rights groups.
“They were constantly saying: ‘Why are you working with
those groups, they are nothing. All they have are slogans,’
” said Sherif Mansour, an Egyptian activist and a senior
program officer for the Middle East and North Africa at
Freedom House.
When their appeals to the United States government failed,
the Egyptian authorities reacted by restricting the
activities of the American nonprofit organizations.
In the face of government opposition, some groups moved
their training sessions to friendlier countries like Jordan
or Morocco. They also sent activists to the United States
for training.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/world/asia/22pakistan.html...
The New York Times had agreed to temporarily withhold
information about Mr. Davis's ties to the agency at the
request of the Obama administration, which argued that
disclosure of his specific job would put his life at risk.
Several foreign news organizations have disclosed some
aspects of Mr. Davis's work with the C.I.A. On Monday,
American officials lifted their request to withhold
publication, though George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman,
declined any further comment.
It's one thing for a newspaper to withhold information
because they believe its disclosure would endanger lives.
But here, the U.S. Government has spent weeks making public
statements that were misleading in the extreme -- Obama's
calling Davis "our diplomat in Pakistan" -- while the NYT
deliberately concealed facts undermining those government
claims because government officials told them to do so.
That's called being an active enabler of government
propaganda. ...
Following the dictates of the U.S. Government for what they
can and cannot publish is, of course, anything but new for
the New York Times. In his lengthy recent article on
WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, NYT Executive Editor Bill
Keller tried to show how independent his newspaper is by
boasting that they published their story of the Bush NSA
program even though he has "vivid memories of sitting in
the Oval Office as President George W. Bush tried to
persuade [him] and the paper's publisher to withhold the
eavesdropping story"; Keller neglected to mention that the
paper learned about the illegal program in mid-2004, but
followed Bush's orders to conceal it from the public for
over a year -- until after Bush was safely re-elected.
As far as I can tell, the US has been a follower, not a leader, in these movements. Sure, activists have been trained in the US. That's been the case for decades though, and it took organization and significant change and economic pressure — not brought about by the US — in the region to create an the conditions for change.
I think there are coincidences and occasionally there could be coercion (don't publish on account of national security) but I do not see it as "an organ of the gov't". It's self interest. In other words it's not comparable to XinHua News, as you're implying.
W/re ME revolutions. All those examples were in places where the outcome was nearly inevitable (needed some logistical/moral support) and the US/EU didn't want to appear to be on the 'wrong side' of history. Witness CN and RU. Specially RU tends to pour arms into those conflicts to upset the West, to some extent --I don't fully understand their intent but they are unsuccessful in much but delaying the inevitable.
Until you realize that undercutting popular support for a leader is step 1 in the PNAC handbook for democratic change. We accuse them of atrocities, we accuse them of holding WMDs, we accuse them of suppressing freedom of speech, we get their population to believe that they are illegitimate by funding "democracy" movements. Then the fighting starts and we drop off weapons with the rebels, even if we know full well this could result in something worse ("Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants").
Now half a dozen countries are burning across the Middle East in the name of setting up US-controlled democracies.
Yet most Americans don't get why the Chinese would defend their leaders reflexively or why the Chinese military would hit out. The view goes something like this: Sure, Wen Jiaobao may have skimmed some money off the top, but politicians are constantly caught in scandals and China has gotten richer while the US has gotten poorer. So China's corruption isn't fatal to growth, while America's bank/Fed chimera may well be. And yet America wants to set China on fire just like it has so many other countries in the world, first with words and then with guns.
So, yes, I do believe this context is relevant. You don't need to agree with their views, but you do need to understand why they see this as self-defense against US imperialism.