What news source do you read in Hong Kong and China? Do you just read the newspaper? Just internet? Chinese? English? I ask because living in the "free and democratic" nation of America, it is almost comical to read news from both sides. On one hand, I have the free press of CNN, NY Times, WSJ, and so on... on the other hand I read Mingpao.com.

The "free" media spends about 70% of the press discussing the demonstrations and how demonstrations work in China, mostly implying that it is state-controlled. The rest of the coverage turns to the cause of the problem and indicate that the demonstration "was triggered in part by a new Japanese history book that PROTESTORS SAY fails to admit the extent of Japan's World War II atrocities." At this point, I don't even have to turn to MingPao to see the other side of the issue... I believe my own gut feeling: that Japan needs to shed those rightists and hawks and actually feel sorry about what it has done to not only Chinese, but mankind. Most of the Japanese I've met in the US are really nice people. Most of them don't talk about WWII, but every now and then you see the remorse they have and the extra effort they take to say what we did was so very wrong. Anyway, my point is that I am not anti-Japanese... I am anti-Japanese hawks... actually, you can even narrow that to non-apologetic hawks (I wonder if any are apologetic...).

Oh, and add one more thing: I am anti-one-sided-non-objective media.

More food for thought: I'd like to see the Chinese history text books and what those say about 1. Tibet, 2. Great Leap Forward, 3. June Forth, 4. The Nationalists, etc etc. Ah, the IRONY!

Some of my personal feelings. Being Chinese, it's impossible to ignore what has been happening to Chinese in the last 200 years. In particular, Nanjing Massacre, Great Leap Forward, and June Forth rank as the three worse things that's happened: one was a by-product, the other two caused by man. Should the communist party apologize their
errorenous judgement in the Great Leap Forward? I think they need to (and have) admitted error. The other two events: I think since a human decision was involved, they need to admit and apologize.

And change. Like the Germans. So remarkable... is this a fundamental difference between the West and the East...!?