I agree with Mark O'Neill, below, from his "New faces" of 1st July. I watch Chinese TV (and Russian and Al-Jazeera), when I'm at the gym -- they don't have cable, just free-to-air....
"...In the past four years, Beijing has spent billions on media to reach the foreign audience - adding TV channels in Russian, French, Spanish and Arabic to the English one launched in 2000, and the Mandarin channel for overseas Chinese. The programmes are presented by well-groomed and highly trained foreigners as well as Chinese, many of them educated abroad with a good sense of how to appeal to their audience.
"China Daily has just expanded its Asian edition, with new content on Asian issues and for distribution in Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Singapore and India, giving it a pan-Asian reach.
While budget cuts are forcing the Western media to close foreign bureaus around the world, Xinhua and other Chinese media are opening new offices everywhere. Voice of America and BBC World Service are cutting services, while China's international radio is increasing them. As Chinese diplomatic and economic power expands, so the journalists who work in these offices have better access to the business and political leaders of foreign countries, giving their programmes more appeal.
"They are restricted in covering Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and other sensitive issues. But they provide better coverage than the Western media do on issues that are not sensitive - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, Africa and South America - because they are more objective."
/snip...
Mark O'Neill worked as a Post correspondent in Beijing and Shanghai from 1997 to 2006 and is now an author, lecturer and journalist based in Hong Kon
/snip...
Mark O'Neill worked as a Post correspondent in Beijing and Shanghai from 1997 to 2006 and is now an author, lecturer and journalist based in Hong Kon
