US-China Relations - 182. page

People’s Daily posted an article on April 2, 2008 to comment the recent decline U.S. dollars, under the title of “The United States Plotted Dollar’s Depreciation to Reduce China’s Foreign Currency Reserve.” The article quoted a comment by Li Liangzhong, the director of the Economics Bureau of CCP Policy Research Institute, in a public forum. Li said that U.S. dollar’s depreciation and the above US$100 per barrel of oil was an elaborately plotted conspiracy by the United States, with the purpose to reduce the purchasing power of China’s foreign currency reserve.

Source: People’s Daily, April 2, 2008
http://finance.people.com.cn/GB/1045/7075088.html

In a comprehensive report about the March Tibetan protests on April 1, Xinhua stated that Chinese police investigations discovered that the Internet has become a most important communication channel. “In addition, the Dalai Dama Clique collaborated with ‘Tibet independence’ elements inside China via a new channel: they first contact each other through communication tools and Internet, set up a time to tune into the Tibetan language channel of Voice of America for coded instructions from overseas and reports in-China progress and trends.”

Source: Xinhua, April 1, 2008
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2008-04/01/content_7900919.htm

Xinhua posted an article on March 31, 2008 saying that U.S. is really the most important source of nuclear weapon dissemination. The article was published after U.S. Defense Department stated U.S. Air Force had mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on intercontinental ballistic missiles. The article claims that U.S. and Taiwan pretend to be “innocent” of the incident and that U.S. is meant to signal a mini-scale nuclear threat.

Source: Xinhua, March 31, 2008
http://news.xinhuanet.com/mil/2008-03/31/content_7887781.htm

China News reprinted in full text an editorial from China Press, an overseas Chinese newspaper based in the United States. The editorial is titled “Be on Alert: Anti-China Working Hand in Hand with Anti-Olympics Campaign.” The editorial states, “Tibet is moving toward unprecedented prosperity along with the rise of China.” The editorial is critical of “the leading advocate in the U.S. Congress for Taiwan Independence” who has called for boycott of the Olympics. It also disapproves that “someone hurried to meet with Dalai Lama to strategize how to internationalize the Tibet issue.”

Source: China News, March 26, 2008
http://www.chinanews.com/olympic/news/2008/03-26/1203172.shtml

After the White House issued a statement on March 20, 2008 that U.S. President Bush will keep to his plans of attending the Beijing Olympics despite the Tibetan protests, the Chinese Communist Party newspaper The People’s Daily ran the news as a headline banner, reading “White House Spokesperson: Bush’s Plans for Attending the Beijing Olympics Unchanged” on the World section’s main page of its website. The banner remained prominently placed for three days through to March 23, 2008. Clicking on the banner brought up  the page displaying the specific article on the announcement. The news report also mentioned specifically that Bush regarded the Olympics as a sporting event and that he would not use it to publicly discuss political issues.

Source: People’s Daily, March 21, 2008
http://world.people.com.cn/GB/7026748.html

Li Shen, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences stated on March 17 that the last 10 years of economic boom experienced in the U.S. after the end of cold war was not the result of information technology development, but because the U.S. had brought down the economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. “Will the U.S. heading into recession repeat history and mobilize all its energy to bring down the world’s other major countries or major powers?” questioned Li.

Source: Xinhua, March 19, 2008
http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2008-03/19/content_7820222.htm

This front page commentary, cited in Wen Hui Bao a Hong Kong based newspaper backed by Beijing, characterized press freedom in the US as “High on Water Content” (a Chinese saying meaning having surface value but little substance). According to the article, under high pressure and an unseen hanging rope, the US media have become reluctant to either criticize the government or discuss the legitimacy of the Iraq war. The media does not have any means to force the government into releasing more information and for a long period of time it has not dared to challenge the government’s propaganda policy. The end result has been to accept and encourage the government’s news which in effect has made the US media unknowingly a propaganda tool for the US government.

Source: China News, March 19, 2008
http://www.chinanews.com/gj/xwbj/news/2008/03-19/1195717.shtml

The Jiefang Daily criticized the U.S. of having a double standard when it issued its 2007 human rights report on other countries. The article said that “while the U.S. pays close attention to human rights violations by other countries, it was blind to its own deteriorating human rights record.” The article stated that there has been a 25 percent increase in cases of personal rights infringement by the executive and judicial branches from 2001 to 2007; The U.S.-lead Iraq war has caused 660,000 casualties with 90 percent of them civilians; and the [Abu-Graib] prisoner abuse scandal has become a symbol of the U. S. The article suggested that U.S. should mind its own business before pointing fingers at others.

Source: Xinhua, March 14, 2008
http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2008-03/14/content_7786747.htm