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Listed below are comments made by ChinaOrg between Wednesday, 7th January 2009 and Monday, 13th April 2009.

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Should Gordon Brown Aplogise? 09:54am on 13 Apr 2009 "... but why should Gordon Brown apologise for something he says he knew nothing about.?"

He hasnt said he knew nothing about 'it'. He hasn't said anything at all. But his spokesdrones have been very careful to emphasise that "Gordon knew nothing at all about these emails".

Sooner or later some member of the MSM is going to have the gumption and the guts to ask them: "But did he know anything about the strategy, or about the Red Rag website?"

But not for a good long while, I shouldn't think.
China's version of Tibet's story 05:30am on 30 Mar 2009 "How do you go up against a charismatic, world-famous English-speaking monk who preaches peace and calls for freedom in Tibet?"

Do you realise that you could have written "How do you go up against a charismatic, world-famous English-speaking monk who preaches peace and calls for freedom in Tibet, and has the mysterious power to plaster the western media with faked images of atrocities in Tibet that actually came from other countries?" - and it would still be 100% factually accurate.
China's version of Tibet's story 05:26am on 30 Mar 2009 "One section focuses on the Tibetan protests of March 2008... together with extracts of Western media reports in order to illustrate what China describes as 'Distorted Coverage'."

The swine. How dare they describe two minutes of news footage of Nepalese police beating Nepalese demonstrators in Nepal - presented on Canandian national news as 'another Chinese atrocity in Tibet' - as 'distorted'?
Whispers of the Dalai Lama 09:32am on 13 Mar 2009 Stalwart BBC reporter travels to a part of China that is not Tibet, is left unmolested by people in pressed trousers who 'look like policemen', and hears his translator speaking to one of the 5 or 6 million Tibetans in the world...
Competitive elections in China? 07:51am on 11 Mar 2009 The BBC report on which this bog is based quotes Wu Bangguo as having said “China will not have democracy” – which is used as the story headline. This is wholly disingenuous.

Firstly, he did not say that. He said: “China must draw on the achievements of all cultures, including their political achievements, but shall never simply copy the system of Western countries…” There is a not very subtle and important distinction.

Secondly, any discussion on the subject of democracy in China that ignores the structures and processes involved in Village Committee democracy is pointless. Thanks to organisations like the BBC, most Westerners will be entirely ignorant of the fact, but China already has extensive democratic grass-roots structures. The electoral system for Village Committees is almost identical to UK Local Government – there is universal suffrage for all electors over the age of 18, and anyone can stand for election, regardless of Party affiliation.

Do not be misled by the name – “Village” Committees are not groups of half a dozen peasant farmers eking out a subsistence living. They can be responsible for communities of thousands of people and they administer substantial budgets. In the Beijing News on Monday CPPCC member Zhao Zhenxian urged that Village Committees in Sichuan should have the primary responsibility for auditing the expenditure of the 1 trillion yuan (about US $140 billion) that is to be used for post-earthquake reconstruction there.

How well village democracy works is a separate issue. I would guess that it works very well in some places and in others it is a hotbed of nepotism, graft, and carpetbagging – exactly as it is in the UK. But given that most Chinese who want to exercise it already have a democratic vote in a democratic process, the BBC’s claim that Wu said: “China will not have democracy” is doubly dishonest.
How news breaks in China 10:15pm on 26 Feb 2009 It's good that the Chinese have started to publish more sensitive information in their foreign language media. It's also good that Chinese speakers can use the internet to find translations of news stories that have not been published in the Chinese-language media.

I've noticed that the BBC generally censors somewhere between a quarter and a half of the comments that are posted on your blogs.

Since these cannot be accessed elsewhere on the internet, and nobody will ever know what they said, perhaps you could use your blog some time to talk about the BBC's censorship policy on your Chinese column, describing the kinds of comments that are censored, and explaining why (in general terms, obviously - I wouldn't expect you to reveal anything that might be considered sensitive).
Apology by text message 02:42am on 07 Jan 2009 It appears that a seventh child has now died as a result of the milk adulteration.

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