Beijing doctors Cheney's speech

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

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From Senior Asia Correspondent Mike Chinoy

Thursday, April 22, 2004 Posted: 0400 GMT (1200 HKT)



HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- A high point of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's trip to China last week was a speech at Shanghai's Fudan University.



But in modern China, some authoritarian communist habits die hard. After complex negotiation, the Chinese agreed to air the speech live on a local news channel.



But they did so with no prior announcement to viewers at an hour when few people were watching.



And then, the Website of the communist party's official mouthpiece, the People's Daily, published what it described as the "full text" of Cheney's remarks in which references to politically sensitive topics were changed or deleted.



Here's one example:



"Across Asia, rising prosperity and expanded political freedom have gone hand in hand," Cheney said.



But on the People's Daily Website, the words "political freedom" were cut.



Beijing's doctoring of Cheney's speech, just days after he met Chinese leaders, was documented by a China expert at the U.S. naval academy, Yu Maochun.



"One of the things they are really nervous about is the spread of democracy in East Asia," said Maochun.



Altogether, Chinese censors made more than a dozen major alterations or deletions.



This is what Cheney said on Taiwan.



"We do in fact support the principle of One China, as I say, as informed by the three communiques and the Taiwan relations act."



But the Website deleted the reference to the Taiwan relations act, the law under which the United States sells weapons to help Taiwan defend itself from a possible Chinese attack.



Also cut were references to the need for democracy in the Middle East, details on North Korea's nuclear program, as well as links between North Korea and Pakistan's rogue nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.



And these words from Cheney: "The war on terrorism must never be used as an excuse for silencing legitimate dissent."



They struck out the portion on how the war on terror should not be used as an excuse to suppress individual rights of citizens, Maochun said.



"In the Chinese context, of course, it is the Muslims of Chinese central Asia, Xinjiang province and Tibetans and other pro-democracy activists and anybody the Chinese don't like," he added.



This isn't the first time the Chinese have censored or doctored comments by visiting foreign dignitaries. It shows that in China, some things never change.

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[Seismic Anamoly]

Unbelievable...or is it.

[NRKofOver]

The US (and who knows how many other nations) has done the same thing in very recent times (especially with Bin Laden). Propaganda is a word used totally wrong, because it's always used in the context of distorting or diminishing the 'proper' viewpoint. But propaganda is nothing more than government control of the information that the population receives. The request by our current administration to TV stations to stop airing Bin Laden videos is simply propaganda, but in this case they cloaked the reason as 'national security'. The truth is that regardless of 'hidden messages', this administration didn't want the American public informed enough about the grievances of these guys to possibly sympathize with them. Whether that's right or wrong, I really don't know, but for the same reason, I can't say what China did was right or wrong.

My music for the disenchanted masses

[Rev9Volts]

of course what china did is wrong. if they hid etruth it is wrong... no matter which country does it....