Chinese Censorship Knows No Bounds

In this article by the New York Times, China's first astronaut's landing was not quite as glamorous as the Xinhua News Network made it out to be. Yang Liwei was the first Chinese astronaut to orbit the Earth which he did 14 times in the capsule Shenzhou in the year 2003.He famously landed and emerged from the capsule smiling and unblemished, cheerily greeting the cameras and reporters. However, it turns out that the truth is a much different story. Upon reentry, a design flaw had exposed Mr. Yang to excessive G-force pressure, splitting his lip and drenching his face in blood. When he landed, workers cleaned up his face, then put him back in the capsule, sealed it, and then finally reopened it for the cameras. Xinhua finally gave a speech that offered an explanation: “Understanding Journalistic Protocols for Covering Breaking News,” was intended to help budding journalists understand Xinhua’s dual mission: to give Chinese leaders a fast and accurate picture of current events and to deftly manipulate that picture for the public to ensure social harmony, and by extension, the Communist Party’s hold on power.

This shows that China is most concerned with political stability, to help support its current level of growth. After Tienanmen square, Chinese leaders kept on repeating the mantra of keeping the public climate stable, and thus helping cement the Communist Party's power. Obviously, China does not have freedom of the press, as it is government owned as is made clearer than ever by this article, but what this means is that Chinese citizens lack opposing viewpoints to that of the Party. However, Chinese citizens are aware of this, and thus have learned to not fully trust Xinhua.What this means overall though is that any sort of revolution or uprising in China will be incredibly difficult, meaning that change will have to come through the process, or else some incredibly dramatic change. But to end on a happy note, at least we got a panda in space.