China: Patriotism triggered, though under censorship · Global Voices
Bob Chen

Tibet is in commotion, people’s life in danger. Looting and shooting and destroying have been on street. The situation there climbed to the front pages of many foreign papers. But when I walked in, through the massive gate of Great Firewall of China to the domestic blogshpere, I found the turmoil and gory images largely gone, a wind of peace, richness and harmony greeting me. It is supposed to be brought by the re-election of the country’s president and premier, and the big finish of People’s congress.
I came to the Bokee.com, which calls itself the “No.1 global Chinese BSP (blog service provider)”. There featured movie stars’ and beauty’s pictures, seven-colored front page, but nothing related to what’s happening in Tibet, except a tiny link “Tibet” under the headline “traveling”.
No sooner had I clicked the link than I shut it down, as my hope to understand the present Tibet can by no means be satisfied by the alluring pictures of Tibetans’ smiling faces and the spectacular Potala Palace, with a tag reads “welcome here for holidays”.
Then I came to BlogChina, another BSP with mass traffic. The headline is inspiring, which is a quote from a blogger named Wu Zuolai —- applaud for President Hu’s insistence on democracy and law (not a bit about Tibet).
One of only a few articles related to Tibet there riveted my eyes. “This must be illusion —- on hearing the subversion in Tibet” by Liu Kunpeng
简介：胜利团结光荣的两会正在盛开，加上改革开放30年的伟大成就；近期西藏发生了骚乱。大好形势和骚乱，两个中一定有一个是幻觉。
The Congress (National People’s Congress) of victory, solidarity and glory is now going, plus the great achievement of the 30-year “reform and open”; Recently Tibet has been in insurgence. Wonderful state clashes with the insurgence, thus one of them must be an illusion.
A campaign of internet control might have been launched to grasp the fort for propaganda. But different from in history, this time the authority tried to guide the public opinion, so that talks on Tibet were allowed in some way. In several other websites, the public opinion is partially shown.
Let’s turn to Sohu’s blog website and yculblog.com, where half Tibet-related articles were copies of official news already released that condemned the unrest, and the others unanimous voices against the traitors. It might be a result of censorship, but one point undeniable is that the incident this time triggered a sense of crisis and furthermore patriotism among many Chinese.
50-metre Sunlight’s comment “the Tibet traitors are unpopular” represents a typical Chinese thinking on the issue. :
西藏的这次事件，是有预谋的，有组织的，有策划的恐怖行为，西方媒体看不到这些手持尖刀屠杀手无寸铁的卑鄙行经的一面，却混淆视听说我们的政府在镇压西藏的“和平示威”
The incident in Tibet is well-organized and planned. The western media see nothing about those thugs with knives in hand who killed innocent people, but tried to confused people by saying that our government is cracking down “peace demonstration”.
On 163.com and the web forum of people.com, more anger was poured against the mobs in Tibet.
Blogger “Nature” from Inner Mongolia pointed that the series of conspiracy is meant to endanger the unification of China.
西藏的那部分不安分子为什么在这个月暴动？因为3月份台湾公投了，通过的话，台湾就独立了，他们这是在与台湾相呼应！台湾独立的后果怎么样？那等于给M国一个亚洲的军事基地，一个踏足我国的平台
Why do those rebels rise up at this point? It happened because Taiwan is going to make referendum in March, and if it was passed, Taiwan would then be independent. Tibetans are answering the call of Taiwan! What would it be if Taiwan was independent? It would give U.S another military base in Asia, a base on which they can reach us.
The CNN picture was widely criticized as it cuts out a critical part that tells why they are mob rather than citizens. See below the complete one in an Australia newspaper
That tells the complete story.
An appeal for alert by a blogger in sina.com summarizes the crisis China has to face in 2008:
拉萨戒严, 疆独劫机, 台湾大选, 海外反华,国外媒体颠倒是非,趁机抵制奥运! – 中国人民遇到了本世纪最大考验! 2008, 中国人你准备好了吗？
Martial law in Lhasa, Hijack in Xinjiang, Taiwan election, anti-China force abroad, confusion made by foreign media, and boycott of Olympics! Chinese run into the harshest challenge of the century! Chinese, are you ready for 2008?
He further numerated:
中国雪灾更是惨烈！回 家的英雄，维护治安的战士，体现了中国人内心最根本的善良和朴实，让我们的社会道德得到了改善！可是纵观西方媒体，没有一个能正面报道，就别提同情了！西 方的电视里面通过故意删减拼凑镜头和被采访者的语录，拼命在西方舆论媒体中制造中国民众火车站暴动，警察暴力镇压和政府不通人情的不实报道！
1.	How tragic the snowstorm in China was! The heroes going home and soldiers keeping orders both showed the goodness and purity rooted in the nature of Chinese. But looking at the western media, I found no positive report, not mentioning sympathy. They cut and patched up scenes and quotes of interviewees, to make an all-in effort on fake stories about unrest in railway stations, violent crackdown and callosity of the government.
然后，我们不想把奥运过分政治化！可是，某个国际著名的导演利用人权问题与北京奥运会解约，然后就是上海有外国歌手在宣布藏独，明是个白痴歌手,反而被国外媒体吹上了天，成为国际战士！
2.  We don’t want to politicize the Olympics! But firstly a famous director dropped out due to human right issue, and then a singer called out “free Tibet” in Shanghai. Obviously she’s a silly singer, but the foreign media nevertheless boasted her up as an international fighter!
…….
6，从舆论上，我们中了欧美一阴招，美国故意把我们从人权问题名单中删除，然后出奇的在全世界夸奖中国人民权利进步，不到48小时，就报道西藏死伤人暴乱！这是故意用卑鄙的手段，先吸引世界关注中国，然后再让我们当中出丑！
We are trapped by the western countries. U.S firstly put us out of the list of human right violators and praised our progress, and then in 48 hours they reported the unrest in Tibet! It’s a mean plot to first drive the attention upon China and then threw us into a gaffe.
8， 明明是暴徒砸强扰乱社会，抢枪，打伤武警，为什么全部欧美媒体仅仅说我们的部队政府警察打人。把藏独分子说成英雄，把那些受伤的保护人民财产的武警说成匪 徒。还故意把特意断章取义的照片由筛选性的放到各大媒体上，给西方民众制造我们公安武警欺负人民的假象！这就是西方媒体的客观和自由吗？
It is obviously a disruption caused by the mob that unsettled the community, committed robbery and hurt police. Why most of western media only mentioned that our police beat citizens? They made the traitors heroes while the police that protected people robbers. And they purposely put on distorted pictures to trick the western that our police bullied people. Is this the objectivity and freedom of western media?
The list goes on.
I am sorry not to mention the blogger’s name, because at my second time to his blog the article had been removed. I then found it copied by another blog and there it came.
Though people still speculate Beijing is taking the chance to trigger and canal a new tide of patriotism to fight against its enemies, judged from the information survived the censorship, the mainstream opinion is now bearing enmity against those sprung the insurgence.
In Tianya.com and the largest military forum in China, Tiexue forum, few posts about Tibet could be found, letting alone the Xinhua forum that has an official background. There were occasional complaints from bloggers who grumbled about their censored posts.