Sharon Stone’s films are being been banned in China, following remarks the American actress made at the Cannes film festival last week suggesting the Chinese earthquake was “karma” for what happened in Tibet earlier this year. Hong Kong’s Cable Entertainment News interviewed the actress on the red carpet, and got a mouthful from Stone:

First, I’m not happy with the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else, and so I have been very, concerned, about how to think about what to do about that, because I don’t, like, that. And then I’ve been, just, concerned, oh, how should we deal with the Olympics, because they’re not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who’s a good friend of mine. And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, ‘Is that karma?’, when you’re not nice the bad things happen to you?

Stone’s comments are all over the internet. According to the Chinese media-watching site Danwei, the Chinese Information Times printed a full-page special on her comments under the headlines “Sharon Stone is an enemy of the whole nation” and “The Chinese people spontaneously start an anti-Sharon movement.” As most Chinese media are still focusing on the 68,000 people killed in the earthquake, the Stone story received more moderate coverage in other papers, Danwei said.

Watch the video of the interview here:

She is not the first person, however, to link the May 12 earthquake to theories about the supernatural and the much-referenced Mandate of Heaven. As mentioned before in this blog, natural disasters have an eerie way of coinciding with major political events in China. Except, others who mention the Mandate of Heaven aren’t necessarily referencing the Chinese government’s policies towards Tibet, but rather how the Communist Party will answer questions about shoddily constructed public structures — like schools that collapsed on young children.

Being college-educated, and from her involvement with the Free Tibet movement — and being an American living under the current political conditions in this country — Stone should be able to separate the actions of a government from the wills and actions of its people. It was an ugly remark and she should have known better.

A meeting with my Chinese friend/tutor on Saturday turned to a very interesting discussion about China, Tibet, media bias and media control. She is from Nanjing, is in her twenties and graduated from HPU last semester. Like many young Chinese, especially those now living outside China, she is frustrated with the characterization of the Tibet conflict in the foreign press as a “crackdown” by Chinese police on innocent Tibetan dissidents.

She’s not alone. The recent protests in Lhasa, which began on March 14 on the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising, spurred intense feelings of nationalism among young Chinese and a debate that continues on YouTube and Facebook.

A few of my Chinese friends on Facebook have posted a link to anti-CNN.com in their profiles (full disclosure: I was an intern at CNN’s Beijing bureau in spring 2005). The site, which includes several videos, is dedicated to pointing out anti-China bias in the foreign media. One friend’s Facebook profile picture is an image of a T-shirt that reads: “I LOVE CHINA.” Facebook groups that are variations on the “Free Tibet” movement have been joined by a number of groups supporting “One China.”

For example, the group “Tibet WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE a part of China” has 20,167 members and seems to be adding members by the hundreds every week. Not all comments posted on the group’s wall adhere to rules outlined in the group’s profile (”NO RACIST REMARKS” and “NO HATE TALKS”).

My friend believes foreign journalists are misrepresenting the conflict, and that is exacerbated by a view in America, popularized in part by the Free Tibet movement, that the Chinese government is oppressing Tibetans. The way she see it, she said, the People’s Liberation Army’s entrance into Tibet in 1950 was not the “invasion” it is often said to be; rather, the army entered a country that was backwards and still relying on a feudal system, and helped Tibet to modernize.

Regardless of what you may think about Tibet’s complicated history, I was interested in her frustration in explaining her views to others. We started using the word “brainwashed.” For many young Chinese, the biggest problem in explaining your opinion to your foreign counterparts besides the language barrier is the fact that many people simply EXPECT you to be in support of your government and without sympathy for Tibetans.

“Of course you think the Communist Party is right,” they nod and say, as if to a child. “You’ve been brainwashed by your government and your country’s education system.”

My friend is not naive about the ills her government has committed over the years, unlike some young Chinese I met in Beijing for whom it seemed large chunks were missing in their understanding of their country’s history. My friend only learned certain details about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989 after she left China and moved to the United States. She is well aware that the government exercises more control over the media in China than in the United States.

In the end, though, media bias is not media censorship. This is not to excuse the media that have been accused of anti-China bias, but to point out the irony of anti-CNN’s creators spending time rooting up evidence of foreign media bias when media censorship stares Chinese citizens in the face every day. Censorship of topics like Tiananmen and human rights is still heavily exercised in China. Earlier this month, a Beijing court sentenced Hu Jia, one of China’s most prominent political activists, to 3.5 years in prison. Hu had written controversial articles on web sites and made comments in the foreign media about human rights.

Even what Chinese citizens can read in newspapers or watch on TV about what is happening in Tibet is limited.

It may just be stirrings of nationalist sentiment, but Chinese netizens have attacked foreign media bias with a zeal that suggests objectivity and journalistic integrity are at least of some importance to them. Now if they could only do it in their own country — imagine what would happen.

———————————————————————-

Related reads:

Danwei: “The Internet wages war on the liberal media.” (April 14)
Matthew Forney in the NYT (op-ed): “China’s Loyal Youth” (April 13)
EasySouthWestNorth: translation of Chang Ping’s “Where does the truth about Lhasa come from?” (April 3) [Chang, an editor with China’s Southern Metropolis Weekly, created controversy when he posted this piece on his blog]
The China Beat: “The Taelspin on Tibet: The Chinese Response to foreign media coverage of the 3.14 unrest” (March 27)
CNN: “Transcript: James Miles interview on Tibet” (March 20) [Miles, of The Economist” talks about being in Tibet during the unrest]

photo: www.anti-cnn.com