My media in China hw... thinking I would like to share what I thought of....

I know this maybe a bit off topic but I felt the need to talk about the need for media censorship and I sympathize with China’s government needs and probable intention of media censorship.

I would like everyone to visualize the Government bodies as parent which main focus is on their child’s overall well-being. Now visualize China’s Government as a strict protective and perhaps a little prideful parent. As parents, they do not want their child to mix with bad companies, develops bad habits and wants to protect the moral integrity of his child. Like any other typical parents, they also want to create a very nice image of themselves and would not want their child to lose the good image and reputation of them lest the child will not want to respect or listen to him after that. Different parents (different government bodies) also have different sets of rules they want their child to follow. Some parents might demand more from their child in some ways more than other parents (e.g. Results) but overall the parents, no matter of American origin or Asian lineage, their main focus will be on the overall well-being of their child. Using this analogy, I would like to explain China’s media censorship policies.

Much of China’s media censorship revolves around the protection of their cultural identity. China Central Propaganda Department (CPD) clams down any TV, Movie titles that are considered low taste, indecent, vulgar or pornographic. This act resembles that of your parent when you are in your growing up phase and this is also parallel with Singapore act of classifying movies according to appropriate age group. Who are these government bodies to decide what is appropriate for us to view and what is not? Like our parents, to shield their children from all known “bad” influences, they will simply prohibit their child to mix with certain group of people, do certain kind of things (i.e. Smoking, speak any words of vulgarities) or watch certain things (i.e. Pornographic or violence). The Government wants the citizen to behave in a proper and upright manner and wants to mold their citizen to what they want them to become but is that the right thing to do? I have no idea as to this question but I would like to say if you are a parent and given the option, most will still choose to do what that is easiest and perhaps the most correct option which is to censor things that our child are expose to than to take the risk of not doing so. This could be a reason why the CPD censors these genres of movie titles I have mentioned earlier.

Secondly, the China’s media censorship also serves to protect the image and political standing of the China’s Communist Party (CCP). Similarly like any parent, you want to look good in front of your child so as to set a good example for them to follow. I believe any good parent will try to conduct themselves well in front of their child; this is likewise for the CCP. In terms of maintaining their image within the country, the CCP has been using the media mainly the Peoples’ Daily and all other CCP controlled media channels to notify their citizens of the good works that was carried out by them. They tend to focus on broadcasting their achievement over these media channel to continue to garner support and respect for their political party. This makes the CCP sensitive to other countries comments and criticism about them. This can be understood as a parent that would not want their child to hear other people complaining about them. Besides the fact that it might dampen the respect the citizens have on them, the CCP can also be said to be prideful parents. This is especially so for a communist party which have a different political system as the rest of the world. Just like the differences in parenting ways, you would want people to acknowledge that your parenting method works right, especially when you alone have your own unique parenting methodology. Thus this made China extremely prideful so they want to be perfect and not want their dirty linens to be washed publicly. This explains the reason for a lot of Government cover-ups like the (Wenzhou train collision, Melamine contaminated milk powder).

Lastly what would a parent do when their child witnesses a horror scene in a movie or witnesses a death or any other potential violent scene in reality? The most common reflex will be to cover their child’s eye with the palm of their hands of course. This act is to protect the child from seeing the bane of the society and not wanting their child to wake up in the middle of the night being haunted by the fright scene. A communist country is a nation that seeks to achieve to be a utopian society. In a utopian society, everything “is” perfect or in actual fact seems perfect. The China’s government in similar effort tries to make their country seems perfect so they tend to not report the “horror” part of the disasters that happens within the country and only focused on the rescue efforts. This makes the disasters in China to what seems as “victimless” disasters. This in a sense acts to prevent the public from getting mass panic and chaos from arising.

However, the China government like any other parents has made a very big mistake of not knowing when to let their children grow independent from their constant protection and shielding. The China government has to realize that their child has already grown up and should let them decide on their own from now and thus lift some of the heavy censorship they are imposing. The China government should also realize that by willing to admit their own mistakes and flaws will allow other countries and their citizen to truly respect them (we all agree that here and then, everyone makes mistakes and that no one is perfect right?) This act of acknowledgement of their mistakes actually triumphs over their acts to conceal whatever mistakes that they committed.

In conclusion, we should sympathize with the various decisions that the China’s government has carried out and we should give China a chance to grow out of their traditional mindset.

P.S: This is written with the idea of keeping my discussion neutral in mind.