I just think the extra context the article provides is more measured and less emotive, so you can read the situation better. I’m in favour of criticising everything, including China.
Given the emotional way Chinese news articles are written with a heavy sense of righteous conclusion, I’ve always wondered if western news organizations would be considered even more anti-Chinese if they just passed through Chinese article with only translation, or even passed through English articles written by Chinese news organizations.
Also, I’m pretty sure this law existed before when I lived in China (I remember hearing about it) but it hasn’t ever been implemented outside of Xinjiang (and even then they just target non-Hui minorities). China isn’t a rule of law country, and a lot of written laws are just aspirational or for posturing. I’m actually really skeptical of this Twitter post because such mass action in a city like Guangzhou would be a crazy hard logistic problem. Maybe one PSB office was doing it for one day for their district, but I doubt they targeted more than a few buildings? Another reason why western news organizations can’t really report on China very well, they see the word “law” and think it has the same weight as it does in rule of law countries. Freedom of speech and press is also guaranteed by the Chinese constitution, for example, but it isn’t very meaningful.
Also, I’m pretty sure this law existed before when I lived in China (I remember hearing about it) but it hasn’t ever been implemented outside of Xinjiang (and even then they just target non-Hui minorities). China isn’t a rule of law country, and a lot of written laws are just aspirational or for posturing. I’m actually really skeptical of this Twitter post because such mass action in a city like Guangzhou would be a crazy hard logistic problem. Maybe one PSB office was doing it for one day for their district, but I doubt they targeted more than a few buildings? Another reason why western news organizations can’t really report on China very well, they see the word “law” and think it has the same weight as it does in rule of law countries. Freedom of speech and press is also guaranteed by the Chinese constitution, for example, but it isn’t very meaningful.