If you Koreans point a finger at all of them and mistreat them, maybe the Chinese students in China can mistreat the Korean students studying in China too, tit for tat.

Thanks for your comments and sharing your opinions. I really appreciate it.

> While implicitly acknowledging that Western media can be biased, I still prefer it, and judge it to be more reliable and ultimately more trustworthy than Chinese media.

I agree with you.

> I believe further that the ultimate responsibility of discerning value from any information I receive is upon myself and my willingness to corroborate, evaluate, and reconcile different sources of information.

I completely agree. Thanks.

The big picture is that- Chinese oversea students in Korea were very angry and upset.

The small picture is that there is some violence involved. However, the big picture is that MAJORITY of Chinese students in Korea are not violent.

Another big picture is that people debating here are violently agreeing with each other that violence is not a good way to protest.

A few American soldiers raped Japanese girls, as a matter of fact though, can you say all of American soldiers are potential rapers?

Well for Chinese oversea students, they have to apologize if they did use the violence. The legal process is the only way to clear the image of the rest of Chinese students there.

No worries, I don’t think I was actually addressing you anyway. Nonetheless, I don’t recall any promises of “fair and balanced” on GVO…but I could’ve missed their mission statement on my way in.

@ Trying to be rational:

You’ve lived up to your name and I admire you for it. We’re cool.

There’s a saying, “familiarity breeds contempt,” that I think is applicable to the relationship between mainland Chinese and the “western” world. Decades ago, despite far stronger (but more obvious) communist rhetoric, many Chinese held a romanticized, idealized image of the United States not unlike how many Westerners hold for Tibet. As China has opened up and cross-cultural interaction has increased, the Chinese have had the opportunity to see that there’s plenty of bad and ugly to go along with the good of the West. All of this is entirely reasonable and execpted just as China’s growing prominence is perceived as a threat by some in the West. Were the roles reversed, the situation would likewise be more similar than different.

I think what we CAN reasonably say is that Western media generally is, at least, FAR more nuanced in its biases, especially relative to Chinese media. While implicitly acknowledging that Western media can be biased, I still prefer it, and judge it to be more reliable and ultimately more trustworthy than Chinese media. I believe further that the ultimate responsibility of discerning value from any information I receive is upon myself and my willingness to corroborate, evaluate, and reconcile different sources of information.

I think GVO is interesting but like you said, maybe you don’t. Compared to the information that is widely distributed through most Chinese websites and forums, GVO and many other “China” websites offer a different perspective that I think Chinese people should expose themselves to, even if it makes them uncomfortable. How else are we going to grow, understand the challenges ahead of us, and begin thinking of how we’re going to overcome those challenges? The world doesn’t exist to cater to us, we have to make our own way. We can either try force or we can try subtlety. I prefer the latter.

> You can post rebuttals, arguments, and discuss issues in the comments of GVO.

GVO is fair that it allows comments of different opinions and it seems that it is fostering a healthy discussion. I agree with this, from my observation so far. My original wording of “fair forum” was too simplistic — will try to improve next time. I hope by now, by the discussion so far, it should be clear what I meant. Sorry for the confusion.

> I want to remind my fellow Chinese that the Chinese media routinely smears and makes strong allegations against state-enemies like the Dalai Lama without giving the other side equal say. Chinese people should not adopt the idea that they can demand the media to be “fair” simply because the media is suddenly saying something that they feel offends the Chinese. That is selective hearing and selective enforcement…otherwise known as hypocrisy.

I think I can safely say that Chinese media are hypocrites. I had romantic pictures of the Western media (e.g. not being hypocrites), when I was not as old as I am today, — I was naive. Human rights comes into mind, oh, beautiful words… wait I digress… still appreciate the good things learned from Western culture and Western media though.

Thanks for the reminder that I should not demand the media to be “fair” (for whatever reason).

I don’t like something that, e.g. CNN, said, but personally *I* did not protest to CNN (I did not write a letter, did not go to the street to protest) — *not* recommending this to other people — because I know it’s their freedom to say what they want. We have laws, right?

If I ever do protest to a certain media agency/company, that would be because I want to make it better, and I have hope in it, and even if I do not like it now I want to like it later after it improves — to my interests of course. Will I protest to CNN? No. If I have the money, I will just set up my own media and begin my own propaganda (subject to law of course).

Good point on court of law and court of public opinion, thanks. As an organization (such as a government), public image is important so comes the need for propaganda. I am not working for a government, so I guess I should not care about public image so much. For things involving me, I think I’ll just go to court of law. Why am I writing on an Internet forum? I think I am talking on an individual-to-individual basis. Why was I here and am still writing at GVO? Maybe I wanted to like it, maybe I still have hope in it, maybe. Finally, I am trying not to be a hypocrite. Again, thanks for sharing your opinions.

No Kai, I’ve lived too long in US and China to have any sense of entitlement, unlike some of the more naive activists on both sides; rather I am just mocking the “fair and balanced” coverage giving to China on this venue.

@ Carry Anne

-> I heard that students who get degrees outside of China, their degrees are worth nothing in China unless they are approved by the embassy where they got the degree. So if you understand the amount of coercion that the CCP puts efforts into all over the world, you can easily know why these students are so quit to cluelessly support silliness..

This is completely baseless and stupid.

No hard feelings here, but perhaps there is a misunderstanding over the meaning of the word “imply.” It means to hint, or not state directly. If a fact or an idea is stated directly, it is NOT implied. On the photos and on websites, the accusation that the men brought the stone and the tool. It is not implied.

“If some Koreans are claiming the Chinese used those weapons, I would hope that the Korean media is also noting that the Chinese have at least denied it. “

Yes, they have. The problem is that the denials by the Chinese are in the form of anonymous photo essays like the one in the original post and these same photos posted to Youtube. These Chinese photo essays are accompanied by lots of Chinese pride talk and Korea bashing language like “gaoli bangzi.” The English-language Youtube videos contain the same counteraccusations but without the Korea bashing for the benefit of an international audience.

Frankly, how could the Chinese deny throwing those objects? There were hundreds of students surrounding the Korean protesters. Many objects were thrown. Even if Chinese students didn’t throw those particular objects (and actually one student was arrested right after he threw a stone, so we know one student did throw a stone), it is impossible for a large crowd of hundreds of students to assert credibly that no one in their group threw that tool. This is not a question of honesty but of logistics.

Click on this video if you didn’t see it before, and put yourself at the ground level in that crowd:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPIpK_PrevI

Watch that video, put yourself in the crowd, and you will understand why it is logistically impossible for any Chinese participants to be able to assert with confidence that the tool didn’t come flying out of the crowd.