We had a look at the BBC’s FOOC’s report on the looting of China’s Summer Palace in 1860 and concluded they had neglected an essential part of the story…the torture and killing of British hostages by the Chinese that led to the burning of the palace.
FOOC has revisited this story (17 mins 30 sec) and expanded on the events to include the killing of the hostages.
Kind of important as China itself refuses to admit the killings and uses the destruction and looting of the Summer Palace as an anti-Western diatribe to stir up the Party faithful and keep them onside.
Shame the BBC felt obliged to toe the Chinese line originally.
“Shame the BBC felt obliged to toe the Chinese line originally”.
Maybe there wasn’t space? This seems a BBC editorial integrity specialty.
I don’t think it is toeing the line regarding UK’s relationship to modern China and its sensitivities. This sensitivity is regarding how we are shaped to see countries and cultures outside the West. The PC perspective is the Otherness of the foreign and the BBC culture wants to “domesticate” this Other so that we will embrace – and not fear – the foreigner. They justify this by talk of “shrinking” or “interdependent” world. Thus the reflex editorially is to shy away from anything a bit horrific because they think it will make us bolt and shy away from political acceptance of a multikulti model that requires sharing space with said people. Of course, this is censorship because it is rewriting history and basically comes down to the banality that we should just look to what makes us human – the good things only. This “cosmopolitan” model works pretty well as consumer model but clashes with full rounded reality. The BBC essentially believes it has a cultural responsibility to deracinate everything to prepare us for their – sorry – the future. Of course, the only snag in this is that it deracinates itself which means it no longer speaks to or represents the British, so it denies a voice to the British because Britishness – the difference from the Other – is the problem and it has decided to suppress that. So, the prosaic consequence of all this is that the BBC will represent that the foreign cultures are “vibrant” and to be embraced; only British culture will be subject to the unpitying eye of exposure of its badness. Hey, caste off your Britishness, embrace the world, it’s lovely out there.
Modern China is a product of the most pure form of British Capitalism, which was introduced to the British Colony of Hong Kong by John Cowperthwaite, and so impressed the Chinese Communist regime, that they gradually adopted a more British form of Capitalism that Britain itself, unrestrained by Labour Party and European Union political interference, as in Britain today.
Modern China makes you far more proud to be British than does the BBC.
Very true. Visited China a couple of years ago and was impressed with the stability and dynamism combined with very strong law and order ethos. I was asked, nay mocked, by Chinese to the effect that Britain does not believe in law and order. They see Britain as a soft touch that does not react with strength and consistency to transgression. There certainly was a tinge of contempt for Britain which they saw as decadent and an interferer with delusions. They think Britain has nothing that China particularly value apart from the symbols of old world charm. They are fed up with Britain asking China to replace its values with “Western” values, which they know would cause major problems domestically. Unencumbered by these vanities they maintain security at their peripheries and because they know who the enemy is and, crucially, the enemy knows that China is implacable and unyielding. Watching their serious manner treatment of news on state, it was refreshingly very different from the gigglers in the BBC staffroom that we are allowed to listen in on.
I too was in China a few years back.
You try explaining to them that the Raoul Moat story that ran for a few days was a media confection and a circus for the criminally-insane, and the clinically-stupid.
And no reflection on what the British people thought of that sick specimen and his rod-tuggers like Gazza or Hari.
The Chinese could only believe what the BBC were sending them-and, as in Islamic states, they still draw their conclusions.
Basically the BBC put our lives at risk every day with their guilt-tripping lies.
Too true. It is the weakness and indecisiveness that fascinates them and jars much with their historical memory of confident people. There is that realisation you see forming in their eyes when they suddenly know that the British of memory no longer is there. They see clearly then the modern facile British who cannot control their home, let alone have any influence on the world. The British have retired from history.
Keep thinking Orwell:
‘Everything faded into mist. The past was erased. The erasure was forgotten. The lie became the truth.’
And some still refer to the BBC as ‘Auntie’, a misplaced term of endearment when the reality is closer to ‘Uncle Joe’.
When will the poll tax payers wake up to this foul abuse of our culture and history?
The British Empire flooded China with opium and bugger the consequence. Only in the bizarre world of Alan Le Vance would this be considered acceptable!
Data? who the f here loves to stay in and watch Sci-fi programs?
Answers on the back of a postage stamp to the Doctor Poo fan club