The BBC’s Asia bureau chief Paul Danahar, who is based in Beijing, responds to a flood of criticism from Chinese readers over Tibet and other issues after the news services website became accessible in China for the first time in years:
…When suddenly the English language edition of the BBC News website (the Chinese one is still blocked by the government) became accessible in China, some readers here, but by no means all, took exception to what they saw.
People like Xie Huai from Zhengzhou e-mailed the site saying: “I often find that stories about China diverge from the truth. Why?”
The answer to the question lies in the word “truth”. Only now are many Chinese getting the chance to debate the “truth” of foreign media publications (and only those not in Chinese) because only now are they getting a point of view on some important topics at odds with the one provided by the state-controlled media.
See also Sydney Herald Tribune’s report: China Eases Wikipedia Controls
