How does the media’s propaganda influence your view of China?

When considering culture and the way cultural barriers impact communication and relations between China and the west, it is especially important to consider the ways in which these cultural misunderstandings are bridged, and how efficient the bridges are. Are they build of a solid foundation that is clear to comprehend or is it more of a very frail old crossing equivalent to badly informed misconceptions and stereotypes. How did we get to understand all of what we know about another country and its culture, history and language? The truth is, unless you are intimately familiar with the country in question or have an interest, your opinions and stereotypes may be influenced by propaganda delivered by television, newspapers, or the internet for instance of which make up some of the counterparts of ‘the media’.

The media is a powerful medium of communication that is able to influence the minds of young and old in such a subconscious way that it is scary to comprehend. We all need information to form opinions and those sources of information are fundamental in creating our attitudes and feelings towards something. The media in any one country can ultimately result in a country’s population with misinformed opinions and beliefs towards any issue, and especially one where language and culture make it difficult to amend by individuals themselves.

On the one hand, the influx of Chinese that have moved to study and work in the UK has allowed a better understanding and more direct opinion formation for both British and Chinese citizens towards each other based on personal experiences and thus there is now more direct communication between Chinese and British citizens than ever before. However, there is still a degree of separation of our two cultures too, that encourages the misinterpretations that have existed from days past. Moreover, there is a large amount of scaremongering that goes on from the media, to portray a negative image towards China, that as it gets more developed and more influential in the world, it will be negative for the western world, such as spying on foreign countries, concerns over national security, and the fear that they will try to force communist values onto other countries around them as they get more economic power, much in a similar way to how the Soviet Union was portrayed by the media during their heyday.

UK citizens views on the Chinese?

In the Chinese context, there have been several stereotypes that have built up and been maintained since. Although it is unsurprising that misunderstandings can occur between two countries that are geographically far apart, such as the UK and China, but even simple objective information is often not correctly understood either. Most westerners would be surprised to learn how large and diverse China is. Geographically, China experiences polar opposites in different regions of the country. The climate in the north part of China has intensely cold weather during the winter, but the South part of China never experiences any snow for instance. Other areas of difference include different builds and diets. The Chinese people in the north tend on average to be taller and enjoy saltier and spicier food than their contemporaries in the south whom also generally enjoy sweeter food than in the north. Whereas most westerners would identify rice as being a fundamental part of the Chinese diet which eaten every day, noodles and bread are just as common depending on which part of China it is, sometimes rice is not eaten at all in certain areas. Another example is, contrarily to popular belief, there is no language called Chinese. Instead, China is made up of hundreds of local dialogues; however Mandarin which is taught across all schools in China is commonly spoken across mainland China. The second most popular language in China is Cantonese which is commonly spoken in Hong Kong and the south providences of China. A lot of impressions British people have towards the Chinese language in tonal form is derived from Cantonese, which is where a large part amount of Chinese immigration emerged in the UK during the 1960’s, whereas contrarily due to the Chinese government’s encouragement of using Mandarin in schools across China since the 1960’s, Mandarin has become the most commonly spoken language in China.

Is democracy alone enough to improve understanding of cultures?

These are just some examples of an overall lack of knowledge towards China that highlights the difficulties in forming such basic stereotypes but understanding them would at least minimise basic misunderstandings.

I believe one of the benefits of living in a democratic country, is the opportunity and ability to access streams of information from a variety of sources, whether it is state organised, privately or through charitable organisations, for those who wish to seek the information, it is readily available. However, not everyone can be so active in seeking such information and processing it to understand other culture’s in such a democratic manner. The opinions of others, who are more passive towards this subject and wish to rely on news that is easier to digest, will rely on the typical mainline media to understand what is going on. So the result can often be that despite the ease of getting more accurate information and not having to rely on mainstream news, a large percentage of the population of a democratic country may still hold views that can be arguably ethnocentric, outdated and possibly dangerously controversial. It is this side of the argument that relies on accurate and fair media coverage of other cultures to improve relationships with other sovereign states.

The answer I have always felt lays in better education from the beginning of people’s lives, encouraging more understanding among different cultures and with the democracy we enjoy in the UK, ensuring that politicians that we are represented by, lead us in a way that encourages more equality and non-biased information to exist here. The consideration of better and more accurate information could focus on basic objective facts to contribute towards an improvement in international relations with China. We are not born to hold prejudice views towards others; we simply learn them as we pick them up from others around us, and that includes the media’s propaganda too.