Businessweek: Behind China's anti-foreigner fever

Businessweek reports on China's growing resentment of Western media companies' coverage of Tibet, which is perceived to be biased.

Ms. Huang, a 26-year-old from Beijing (who does not want her full name published), recently went shopping for some groceries in the Chinese capital at a store run by Carrefour (CARR.PA). While many Chinese have called for boycotts (BusinessWeek.com, 4/22/08) of the French retailer to protest France's perceived support for Tibetan protesters, Huang says she has no problem buying her eggs, meat, and vegetables at the store.

Instead of criticizing Carrefour, she says she is more angered by the coverage of China on CNN. "I think we should be opposing Western media," she says. "I am very patriotic and also rational. And I am strongly against anything that is unfair to China."

Even as Beijing and Paris make nice and the likelihood of widespread protests and boycotts against Carrefour, luxury goods maker LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) and other French companies operating in China appears to lessen, a much stronger groundswell of anger, aimed squarely at the Western media and its perceived bias against China, is growing. That animosity appears much more deeply rooted than that recently directed at French companies and is getting stronger by the day.

...

That the resentment against the Western media has reached such a pitch clearly comes from the Chinese perception that foreign reporters are deliberately attempting to damage China's ability to hold a successful Olympics. The disconnect between the glorification of the Games in the state-controlled Chinese press and the critical coverage abroad is only strengthening that aggrieved sense.

...

It would be ridiculous to assert that the Western media is completely unbiased. We should be sensitive to the feelings of the Chinese in our midst - my (now former) program has several mainland Chinese students, and will likely always get some. The Chinese will keep visiting and doing business in Western countries in general. They should not be made to feel abused.

Of course, they are also have been lied to by their state media. China's armed forces are guilty of human rights abuses in Tibet.