[baybal2]

FYI, this publication, and its parent is pretty much People's Daily in disguise.

It is made along the lines of Shanghai Oriental Morning Post 2.0. Without a doubt, it is an even more of a state organ media than it's spiritual predecessor, despite the mandate to push "dissenting" view.

Unlike something like Southern Weekly, which had not a single party cadre in its editors, despite being overtly party ran, but closed for merely contemplating of having its own line.

I read Southern Weekly during short stints in China a decade ago. Even it was an extremely stiff writing. I couldn't comprehend how people managed to spot "dissent" in it, except for the sole fact it had original writing not coming from the propaganda ministry, and it doing "a fact of life" reports.

Give this some thought. Were they not doing this with 100% official blessing, they would've been "rectified" faster than you can blink.

[tly_alex]

I would love to see what's wrong with this particular article that's not true. From what I am reading, most of the piece was based on the the doctor's experience.

[peteretep]

Propaganda is not about what's true and not true, but about what's amplified and not amplified. I'm sure literally every word of this moving piece about a brave Chinese doctor overcoming adversity to help heal her countrymen is true.

I suspect an article in Western-style media might have been a little less quick to let the government off the hook though:

> The main problem wasn’t poor preparation, but the sudden influx of patients that would have overwhelmed a stockpile even 10 times the size available

That sentence is probably true, but it also doesn't mention the ham-fisted approach by authorities at the beginning which exacerbated the problem.

[krageon]

> what's amplified and not amplified

Euphemistically this is generally called spin, and is practised by every large company and every large paper with any kind of state involvement (in a very real sense they all do, even in the west). Criticising a Chinese publication for containing propaganda while being mired in it constantly ourselves is just another example of picking "what's amplified and not amplified", because it's part of a broad push to demonise China (the big scary Other).

[hawkice]

I think political bias at FOX can diminish their reporting substantially. But government propaganda truly is a different thing. It's as if you are comparing a natural disaster to a genocide - yes, the issue with both is that people die, and humans dying is with us no matter what we do. But even a serial killer acting as maliciously as possible isn't the same as a government dedicated to killing. There exists a meaningful ethical distinction and it's strange to hear people pretend it doesn't matter.

[krageon]

What I was implying is that the aggregate effect of corporate spin and government pressure is not materially different (in theory or in practice) from what might be happening in China. They're both very very bad and we should talk about how to fix that, what we shouldn't be doing is pointing fingers and pretending one is bad (while neglecting to mention the other).

[ChefboyOG]

I am no defender of Western media, but this is a textbook false equivalency. There is massive material and theoretical difference between corporate spin and government propaganda. Corporate dishonesty is possible in the US precisely because we protect the press's freedom. China, on the other hand, jails jails more journalists than any other nation. Sure, they're both "bad," but fundamentally different.

[hawkice]

Yes, it turns out we disagree.

[killjoywashere]

> but about what's amplified and not amplified

Makes Chinese ownership in reddit even more concerning, no?

[ngokevin]

The hatred of China in Western media is amplified to the max. Sometimes I think we're the ones being washed.

[robocat]

> The hatred of China in Western media

That’s a very broad brush. I can see why you might say that about US media, but can you justify saying that about “Western” media?

[GordonS]

Brit here, and we are being spoonfed plenty of anti-Chinese FUD by the mass media too, although certainly not to the same extent as in the US. Corona virus hasn't helped, with plenty idiots blaming China and even calling for revenge. As usual, it's anything to detract from problems closer to home.

I work with colleagues in multiple European countries, and have had this conversation - similar anti-Chinese sentiment appears to be being spread in Spain, Norway, Sweden, France and others.

Whenever the US picks a boogeyman de jour, Europe is often not too far behind, but always to a lesser extent.

[baq]

Yes. Frankly I’m surprised the CCP influence on Reddit is not very visible.

Tik Tok scares me quite a bit more though.

[Markoff]

not visible, been recently to r/worldnews ? everything criticisng China downvoted into oblivion if not straight deleted/banned

[peteretep]

Occam's razor says this is bots rather than anything being done via "official" Reddit channels.

[pmachinery]

It's unfortunate that HN is still plagued with posts like this (and worse) about "Chinese", "China", "CCP" or even "MSS" that would (I hope) not be tolerated for one second if the words were, say, "Jewish", "Israel", "Zionist" or "Mossad".

[knolax]

Disclaimer: I don't agree with the opinions presented on Sixth Tone or any other publication for that matter.

We've now progressed to the point where even objectively true information that isn't prefaced with "I HATE THE CCP" is considered propaganda. Imagine if somebody told you that NPR was Democrat backed liberal propaganda not because it provided false information, but because it wasn't as critical of progressive social policies as Fox News would be. That's not propaganda, that's disagreement. If you literally can not comprehend that somebody might legitimately disagree with you, and will dismiss objectively true information on those grounds, then maybe you should apply the same critical judgement you've displayed here to the media you do trust.

[throwaway_pdp09]

> We've now progressed to the point where even objectively true information that isn't prefaced with "I HATE THE CCP" is considered propaganda

No, you just made that up.

[knolax]

That's what GP's position is. He agrees that the content of the article is correct (or can not prove otherwise), but considers it propaganda simply because it is not as critical of the Chinese government as he would prefer. Notice how no comments here have been able to point out any objective falsehoods with the article's content when asked to do so.

[krageon]

I find it incredibly ironic that from the current voting patterns we can clearly see that you have a point (yes, it's bad etiquette to refer to voting, but in this case it's topical), even with people claiming that you literally made this up.

[bhanhfo]

"where even objectively true information"... do you have an example of this? What kind of recent news do you have in mind?

So far, all the Covid19 stats out of China proofed to be fake. But I am happy to stand corrected. What numbers proofed to be correct in hindsight?

[OwlsParlay]

> So far, all the Covid19 stats out of China proofed to be fake

Can you provide a source on that? The only "proof" I have seen people confident of is speculation based on the urns delivered to funeral homes - which IMO can be attributed to non-Covid-19 related deaths continuing during the lockdown.

[TeMPOraL]

> So far, all the Covid19 stats out of China proofed to be fake.

Citation needed. Which numbers have been proved to be incorrect? So far, all I've seen is everyone saying the equivalent of "it's China so they must be lying".

[bhanhfo]

You know very well that it is impossible to get accurate numbers at this point. Even the graveyards in Wuhan are currently locked and guarded.

So what kind of source do you expect me to link to?

[knolax]

> So far, all the Covid19 stats out of China proofed to be fake.

I keep seeing people confidently claim that the numbers out of China are "fake" but I've yet to see a credible source. Could you please provide some?

[wangii]

> Propaganda is not about what's true and not true, but about what's amplified and not amplified.

could you show a single article that is not propaganda, according to this standard?

don't get me wrong, I actually agree with you. however, I would refrain from jumping to assertion too early.

[peteretep]

I'm not providing a definition of propaganda, I'm describing a _characteristic_ of effective propaganda. The test for whether something is propaganda is nicely defined in Wikipedia, which is "[whether it] is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda".

[wangii]

OK. so is there any article is not to written to `influence an audience and further an agenda`.

Everybody's playing the game But nobody's rules are the same Nobody's on nobody's side

[peteretep]

You've omitted the word "primarily" in your quote, and it was an important one. But let's take a British tabloid like the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail has a distinct agenda, but the _primary_ purpose of content in the Daily Mail is to sell copies of the Daily Mail. The Economist has an unrelenting neo-liberal agenda, but again the primary purpose of content in The Economist is to sell copies of The Economist. These publications are rarely considered to be propaganda.

Some commercial or semi-commercial publications explicitly have aims of propaganda. The Guardian was founded to explicitly push an agenda, for example. Generally one tends to refer to this as "media bias" or "editorial slant" to distinguish it from propaganda pushed by governments.

This doesn't necessarily imply that all state-owned or non-commercial news outlets are propaganda, although I think one's starting assumption should be that they are. The BBC's World Service definitely serves (served?) the British Government's aims abroad, and was explicitly funded as such. _However_, good-faith accusations of it publishing propaganda are pretty rare, presumably because it's considered more useful by the UK to be a publisher of news that people will believe, rather than pushing a specific angle.

[baybal2]

> I would love to see what's wrong with this particular article that's not true.

May well be nothing.

The gotcha here is not what is being said, but why it is there in the first place.

[ezVoodoo]

Why it is there? It sounds to me that you think the Chinese people do not have the right to write a blog and post it on the Internet. Then why are you posting here? Is there any particular reason that makes you NOBLE enough to write down your words and show them to people?

[yorwba]

> It sounds to me that you think the Chinese people do not have the right to write a blog and post it on the Internet.

baybal2 can be quite trollish, but he gets accused of pro-China bias much more frequently. This is actually the first time where I've seen the opposite accusation.

One time, dang (who moderates the discussion here, in case you're not aware) even commented specifically to defend baybal2 and clarify that he's not a "pro-Chinese agent": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898

Impressions based on single comment threads can be very misleading about the character of individual participants here.

[yorwba]

Also what is not being said. I do think Sixth Tone's writers are trying to do write informative articles instead of bland propaganda, but some topics are conspicuously absent.

E.g. if you search for articles about Uyghurs: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uyghur+site%3Asixthtone.com There's not much wrong with those articles, except for what's missing.

Compare with the South China Morning Post, which is also sometimes accused of being propaganda, but it does cover critical topics: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uyghur+site%3Ascmp.com

[baybal2]

FYI, Jun Mai lives and works out of Beijing, and seems to be doing that with ease. It is near impossible for HK journalists to get journalist visas for mainland China.

Second, he does political reporting, in fact, he specialises on it. A foreign person is simply not doing political reporting in a country like China. Absolutely inconceivable, beyond some fully choreographed potemkin village tours.

Third, what he puts in his writing, and very overt innuendos he makes from time to time feels very much like somebody doing a "write about this, and that" job. The logical, and thought flow simply doesn't feel like a news report.

From the very beginning of his articles, he already has an argument given almost like a statement of a fact, and then he steers the reader towards that with random supporting arguments. In other words, he knows, from the start, reliable facts about current events he writes about.

Fourth, where does his info comes from? A lot of things he wrote before could've only come from a first party source. How he gets access to state events to which even internal party press is not allowed?

It is 100% clear to me that he is a part of a leaking operation, and very clumsily ran at that.

[EdwardDiego]

I'm surprised that they let him admit that he arrived to a ward covered in rubbish and medical waste staffed only by two opthamologists and two nurses tbh.

At -2 (and counting) for this currently, any downvoters care to comment as to why? If indeed this publication is a propaganda mouthpiece, then my surprise that they're publishing something that reflects badly on their medical providers should be easy to understand

[peteretep]

> I'm surprised that they let him admit that he arrived to a ward covered in rubbish and medical waste staffed only by two opthamologists and two nurses tbh.

Sounds like a great way to establish credibility, while throwing local Wuhan officials even further under the bus.

This is not a story about how everything is perfect in China, 'cuz that's not believable to anyone. It's a story about how Central Government eventually fixed everything with the help from Patriots, which I think is going to be in increasing contrast to the Federal Government in the US, again despite a great deal of individual heroism on the ground level and a fair amount of competence in the civil service.

[wakenmeng]

Actually there are a lot of posts(pics, videos) on China social media from doctors showing they were lack of PPE, and using even plastic bags. It is not they said that china gov controls all media and social posts. And most of the videos u saw on twitter which gov staffs' violence are posted on Chinese social media first to explore and report this to the gov. They are just similar to other countries' gov staffs' enforcement violations. It happends sometimes, but when it happened in China, they tagged "CCP violence".

[Melting_Harps]

> Actually there are a lot of posts(pics, videos) on China social media from doctors showing they were lack of PPE, and using even plastic bags.

Agreed. But, that still wouldn't stop the CCP from trying to deny that it happened or continues to take place, just as they're actively lying about the death count in just Wuhan as many locals reported that crematoriums were running 24/7 and urns were being delivered by the truckload daily for the families of the dead [1].

I don't think we'll ever truly know the death count from all of this on Mainland China, mainly because the CCP are trying to spin the optics away from their culpability in trying to cover it up and the censorship to do so while trying to change the narrative to suit their ends.

1: https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-residents-say-chinese-...

[peteretep]

> that still wouldn't stop the CCP from trying to deny that it happened or continues to take place, just as they're actively lying about the death count

The Chinese populace aren't stupid, and China doesn't have the level of totalitarian control that North Korea has. Flat out denying it happened is a great way to weaken how much trust the population have in the state media.

Highlighting the (supposed) superiority of the Chinese approach to solving it to the rest of the world, now there's a gold mine, and you can be very subtle about that.

[Melting_Harps]

> The Chinese populace aren't stupid, and China doesn't have the level of totalitarian control that North Korea has. Flat out denying it happened is a great way to weaken how much trust the population have in the state media.

They're a mix of conditioned (brain washed) and terrified at being disspeared by the CCP.

Make no mistake this is a CCP caused pandemic, and is aptly called the CCP-Virus in Hong Kong: I fear anything short of having the CCP on trial for Crimes Against Humanity in the The International Court of Justice will only exacerbate the problem and will lead to further pandemics, as they never learned from SARS.

They censored the Physician calling out to the World how grave this disease was, and he subsequently died. Citizen Journalists have since gone missing that exposed the decrypted state the hospitals were in and the amount of dead were piling up and left aside.

[wakenmeng]

whaaaat? so hostile and rascism, looks like u r a little bit "mix of conditioned".

[wakenmeng]

the UK and USA said "CCP lying about the death toll", because death num in their countries is bigger. dude, Just give it a thought, is there any possibility that the UK and US governments are doing shitty jobs, no prepare during the whole February, no lockdown or quarantine action until March? On Feb 19, there are 50091 confirmed cases and 2029 deaths in one city Wuhan. if u think the number is "faking" small, u should think about that the government has locked down the city, asked for self-quarantine and focues on the medical sources since Jan. What most of the western medias u know were reporting then? Did they warning u how serious the virus is and ur gov should be prepared? did ur government do any action during the whole Feb after the virus is reported? watch this from BBC: https://youtu.be/mc6OVmNnPJo

[knolax]

The article you cite lists no source for the crematorium factoid. In addition to that, it also cites the Daily Mail, a tabloid that is banned from Wikipedia. If you google around for the crematorium factoid, you will find that almost all articles about it cite reports by the Epoch Times[0]. The Epoch Times is a bona fide propaganda outlet[1] that pushes objectively false antivaxx and QAnon conspiracy theories. Their initial report consisted of them sending random people to count cars going into a single funeral home and trying to extrapolate that into the entire region. If you're willing to be critical of Sixth Tone, then please display similar criticality towards other media as well.

[0] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/we-cant-stop-funeral...

"We need to pick up bodies when they call us. Every day, we need at least 100 body bags," a crematorium worker named Mr. Yun told the Epoch Times"

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times

[redis_mlc]

It's well-known that corona viruses wipe out ICU staff, so there's really nothing to hide.

It was reported with SARS-1 (2002/2003) in Toronto and S. Korea, and probably China.

IIRC, with SARS-2, it was a major concern in Italian and US hospitals.

[robocat]

The most interesting parts of the article to me were:

1. They had enough PPE (quite possible - the first place hit should have plenty available)

2. No staff caught the virus (this seems unlikely - even with perfect protection at work, some should have caught it at home?)

[redis_mlc]

If you read the article carefully and look at the pictures, they had issues. One picture shows a doctor wearing plastic shopping bags over their shoes.

Also, the previous staff did get ill, partly because of changing in the dark in a small room. The current staff fixed the lighting and added mirrors.

Contamination from dressing and undressing scrubs was also a problem in Toronto hospitals with SARS-1.

[Gibbon1]

One of the things I read was the Chinese isolated doctors and nurses working with COVID19 patients.

[Cthulhu_]

It's a classic hero's journey kinda article - a few paragraphs later the author does some chest-beating about how they made some small changes which (miraculously, given the existing conditions) avoided having ANY medical staff infected - a bold claim, too good to be true given the situation when they came in.

I mean a lot of stories posted on HN are about how things were shit but how a hero came in and fixed things. The article wouldn't have worked if it was someone coming into a ward where everything was already great - there would be nothing to improve, nothing to be proud of, and if anything they could only talk about how bad things were. You want an upwards story, not a flat one.

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

The other interesting admission is that the first case was Jan 3 and the ward was flooded with patients by mid-January, well before the CCP finally took action and locked down Wuhan on Jan 23rd.

[chippy]

What stood out for me was the doctor was from Guangdong which is essentially the Cantonese speaking part of China and right next to Hong Kong. Secondly the references to English speaking friends (I guess that's a normal journalistic thing to make it internationally relevant) and finally the subtle jab at the US response.

What's most interesting generally about this is where criticism is allowed in China. And it is actually allowed - but the main culprits are the governments of Wuhan and Hubei region and that it's the central government that is responsible for rescuing and clearing up their act. There wasn't too much of this in this article, but there was a little bit between the lines.

[knolax]

What stood out about the author being from Guangdong? It's one of the most populous and economically/culturally influential regions of the country. Also Canton is just an archaic spelling of Guangdong, similar to Peking/Beijing.

[Markoff]

wanted to write same comment, this is just CN gov publication for foreigners, which is trying to hide its origin with clever propaganda, where they add some minor critism into article, but overall praising tone stays untouched

not really that different from paid reviews in west, where you find in cons things people don't care about and they are just added to look less biased