From the BBC’s irony department:
Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.
The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.
But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper.
Not just a funny story, this also illustrates how successful China’s state-run media have been in keeping Chinese citizens in the dark about Tibet’s autonomy movement. The Snow Lion flag has been waved on news networks around the world, posted on blogs all over the Web, draped around shoulders in major cities everywhere and hung from the Golden Gate Bridge. It was all over the streets in the violent tussles in Tibetan regions of China. And the government has managed to control the flow of information so successfully that its people haven’t so much as seen the Tibetan flag.
In an age of near-instant information, this is a frighteningly impressive feat.
Image via Wikipedia.
3 responses so far ↓
1 B // May 2, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Definitely an ironic story and a relevant point about current Chinese policy, but *I* would not have recognized that flag, and I doubt most people would. So I don’t think that we can chalk this one up exclusively to state-controlled media in China.
2 mark // May 3, 2008 at 1:01 am
It’s understandable that you wouldn’t recognize it — you don’t live within a few hundred kilometres of Tibet.
But a Chinese person not recognizing the primary symbol of a movement that is in the Chinese news every day — that’s remarkable, and something akin to a Spanish person not recognizing the Basque flag, or an Albertan never having seen a fleur-de-lys.
3 B // May 4, 2008 at 10:37 am
I don’t think it’s as odd as you are making it out to be. Knowing about the movement for Tibetan sovereignty and recognizing a flag are two separate things. Incidentally, there are numerous people around Canada who would quite likely not recognize a fleur-de-lys. And many others who may not even be clear on what the whole “Quebec issue” is even about. Part of that no doubt is apathy, but part of it could also be the way the “issue” is portrayed in national media. Perhaps we should examine Canadian coverage of Quebec sovereignty in comparison to Chinese media coverage of Tibetan sovereignty (not that I believe the two situations are alike, but you get my point…)
Leave a Comment