“Outlying areas pay high price for grand plans to develop Beijing” | Shi Jinhtao

Friends living in China say the local media early in was censoring all news about what was going on. Hiding the destruction of bridges by the floods, because, they say, China has been playing up how many bridges it builds while the “failing west” has “crumbling infrastructure”. So you can’t have the stuff you’ve been boasting about being swept away by floods!

China resident friends have been getting news from international media via VPNs. We here in Hong Kong have been getting more news than on the mainland.

But now they’re angry and they’re letting their anger out — at the officials, the apparatchiks. Made worse by news that huge lumps of disaster funds have disappeared in local apparatchiks’ pockets. Strange that!